Who would have thought that it was possible for a ventriloquist to be hugely successful in a medium like old fashioned radio. It certainly seems over the top, but that’s exactly what happened with the successful partnership of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.

Bergen was born in 1903 and learned the art of ventriloquism at a young age. Edgar commissioned a mannequin to be created by a local craftsman and gave it the name Charlie McCarthy and the brash persona of a boyish womanizer who could get away with double harmonies.

Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy became a duo playing talent shows in the Midwest while Bergen was in college at Northwestern. Eventually, Bergen finished his studies and began acting full time.

In the 1930s he performed in New York and even toured Europe and South America with his show, but vaudeville slowly lost popularity due to new forms of media such as film and radio.

Radio was not the obvious choice for a ventriloquist, but Bergen didn’t let that discourage him. In the mid-1930s, Bergen and his doll appeared on NBC’s Royal Gelatin Hour. As strange as he seemed to have a ventriloquist on the radio, his humor and wit made him an instant fan favorite.

In 1937 he was rewarded with his own advertisement, The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show, on NBC, which became an overnight success. The show was so popular that it aired on various networks until 1956.

In the show’s first year, Bergen was embroiled in controversy while performing the Mae West parody “Adam and Eve.” He made comments that were deemed inappropriate, which drew unwanted attention from the Federal Communications Commission in 1938. The controversy passed, however, and the show gained even more popularity.

Over the years, Edgar added more characters to his act. The most famous of these were the goofy but lovable Mortimer Snerd and the man-eater Effie Klinker. Under normal circumstances, it would be correct to assume that a ventriloquist act relied on viewing, but the show turned out to be a huge hit on radio, and while it seemed like a natural progression, it made very few appearances on television.

In the late 1970s, Bergen decided to retire and donated Charlie to the Smithsonian Institution. A week later he passed away after performing in a show with Andy Williams.

Today Charlie and two other puppets, Mortimer Snerd and Effie Klinker, are on display at the Radio Hall of Fame and Museum in Chicago and in 1990 The Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy Show was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.