Edgar Bergen

Edgar John Bergen was an American actor, comedian and radio performer, best known for his proficiency in ventriloquism and his characters Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. He is also the father of actress Candice Bergen. He died on September 30, 1978, in Las Vegas, Nevada due to kidney disease.

Bergen was born Edgar John Bergren in Chicago, Illinois, one of five children and the youngest of two sons of Swedish immigrants Nilla Svensdotter and Johan Henriksson Berggren. He lived on a farm near Decatur, Michigan until he waswhen his family returned to Sweden where he learned the language. He taught himself ventriloquism from a pamphlet called The Wizards Manual when he wasafter his family returned to Chicago. He attended Lake View High School. After his father died when he was just 16, he went out to work as an apprentice accountant, a furnace stoke, a player piano operator, and a projectionist in a silentmovie house. The famous ventriloquist Harry Lester was so impressed by Edgar that he gave the teenager almost daily lessons for three months in the fundamentals of ventriloquism. In the fall of 1919, Edgar paid Chicago woodcarver Theodore Mackto sculpt a likeness of a rascally redheaded Irish newspaperboy he knew. The head went on a dummy named Charlie McCarthy, wh

Source: Wikipedia