The hour-long variety broadcast show was a highly popular format in the mid-1930s, and ventriloquist Edgar Bergen knew that his 17 December 1936 guest spot on Rudy Vallee's The Royal Gelatin Hour was a chance to break away from the uncertainties of nightclub engagements, party entertainment jobs, and a declining vaudeville circuit. Newspaper radio pages puzzled over Vallee's decision to "waste" airtime on an act that seemed to require being seen, and program insiders had even stronger doubts. However, Vallee asked his audience to give the newcomer a fair hearing, and top-hatted Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy, were so successful that they stayed for 13 weeks.

     On 9 May 1937, the shy ventriloquist and his brash alter ego began hosting the National Broadcasting Company's (NBC) The Chase and Sanborn Hour on Sunday evenings at 8:00, one of radio's most desirable time slots. The Bergen­ McCarthy program would see changes of title, length, personnel, sponsorship, and emphasis over the next two decades, but it would remain among the highest-rated of all programs until the summer of 1956, when network radio was rapidly yielding audiences to television.

     Chase and Sanborn's program budget could afford a parade of Hollywood guest stars and the weekly services of singers Dorothy Lamour and Nelson Eddy, conductor Werner Janssen, and emcee Don Ameche. In the second half of each program, mischief-making Charlie McCarthy mocked W.C. Fields for his drunkenness and crabbiness. Volleys from the McCarthy­ Fields feud are among the best-remembered lines in radio comedy-for instance, Fields' threat to whittle Charlie into a set of venetian blinds and the dummy's punning response, "That makes me shutter." On 12 December 1937, Mae West sent a shiver through the sponsor and network ranks when her sultry reading of an Adam and Eve sketch on the show drew widespread protests. More happily, the program pioneered remote broadcasts from military installations, and in 1939 Bergen introduced his second radio dummy, cheerfully slow-witted Mortimer Snerd.

     Becoming a briskly paced half-hour show in January 1940, the retitled Chase and Sanborn Program lost regulars Ameche and Lamour and placed renewed emphasis on Bergen's and his dummies' interplay with guests such as Charles Laughton, Carole Lombard, Clark Gable, and Errol Flynn. Ray Noble led the orchestra, and, in sketches exploiting the differences between British and American English, he often rivaled Mortimer Snerd in comic "dumbness"; Bud Abbott and Lou Costello offered variations on their "Who's on first?" routine. In 1944 Bergen added a third dummy, aging and man-hungry Effie Klinker, who, when asked if she had anything to say to the listeners, blurted out her telephone number to any interested male. The lineup of celebrity guests halted in 1948 when Chase and San­ born prepared to drop its sponsorship. In a transitional phase, Don Ameche returned with Marsha Hunt for a recurring segment as the eternally at-odds couple, the Bickersons.

     Moving to the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in 1949 as a result of William S. Paley's "talent raid" on NBC, The Charlie McCarthy Show continued to adjust to rapid changes in radio and in the sociopolitical climate. Called The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show in 1954 and The New Edgar Bergen Hour in 1955, Bergen's program now emphasized citizenship in a larger world by inviting scientists, professors, as well as military, political, and diplomatic figures to discuss their careers. Bergen and his friends vacated their regular time slot on I July 1956, and except for appearances on his first sponsor's 100th and 101st anniversary programs in 1964 and 1965, Edgar Bergen's radio career had ended. He went on to host a television quiz show in 1956 and 1957. Ber­ gen died in his sleep in 1978 after the third Las Vegas performance of a planned farewell nightclub tour. Charlie McCarthy, who once had his own room in Bergen's Beverly Hills home, is now housed in a Smithsonian Institution display case.

     In its early years, the Bergen-McCarthy program prompted an avalanche of Charlie McCarthy hooks, dolls, spoons, radios, and other products. In most radio households, the show was the measure of Sunday evening family listening, yet Charlie McCarthy's leering attentions to female guests challenged propriety, and today the show's stereotypic treatment of W.C. Fields' drinking, Effie Klinker's "old maid" status, and Mor­timer Snerd's good-natured rural stupidity would draw protests from many quarters. Still, the Bergen-McCarthy shows remain among the most popular in "old-time radio" circulation.

     In retrospect, Bergen's success lay in his decision to build his act on a cluster of ironic impressions. Opposing the hard-times grain of the 1930s, Bergen and Charlie wore elegant evening clothes, and Charlie's monocle and upper-crust English accent gave an initial impression that was startling at odds with his earthy harshness. Charlie assumed the calculating speech rhythm of the schoolyard sharpie, and he wasted little respect on his elders, particularly the sometimes preachy Bergen: "I'll clip ya', Bergie, so help me, I'll mow ya' down!" was Char­ lie's signature threat. Bergen sometimes flubbed his lines, but cocky Charlie rarely did. Charlie often ridiculed Bergen's lip movements and complained that his creator had grown wealthy by stinting on the hoy's allowance. Thus Charlie seemed to have the upper hand and the last word, but all the while Bergen's hand and mouth animated the creature of wood and cloth. The two were sharp opposites, yet one was entirely the creation of the other.