check Mate

Shari DeAngelo

Please view this here on Black (Thanks to fd!) There are subtleties to this shot that require a bright monitor....

Edward Bergen (1903-1978) was born in Decatur, Michigan to a Swedish family. He taught himself ventriloquism from a pamphlet when he was 11. A few years later he commissioned a woodcarver to make a likeness of a rascally Irish newspaperboy he knew. The head went on a puppet named Charlie McCarthy, who became Bergen's lifelong sidekick.

Bergen and his alter-ego McCarthy appeared together with top billing in several films, including the technicolor extravaganza The Goldwyn Follies (1938), opposite The Ritz Brothers. That year they also appeared in You Can't Cheat An Honest Man, with W. C. Fields. At the height of their popularity in 1938, Bergen was presented an Honorary Oscar (in the form of a wooden Oscar statuette) for his creation of Charlie McCarthy.

Today he ( a replica, actually) can be found playing chess in our den with my son, Blair.

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