ROAD TO FAME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 November 1938, Page 5

ROAD TO FAME

’• A'-V.. EDGAR BERGEN’S SUCCESS. ' Four years ago an ambitious (and hungry) vaudeville performer haunted the offices of theatrical agents in search of an engagement. There were none to be had. Vaudeville was dead. The future seemed very black indeed. He sent telegrams to all advertising agencies, offering his services for a pittance but was refused. He offered to forget ventriloquism and go on the air as a “two-act.” He “auditioned” to no avail. Today Edgar Bergen, one of the stars jin Universal’s “Letter of Introduction” is counted the best entertainer in the entire amusement field. Offers pour into his office with every mail. He has radio contracts, motion picture contracts, night club contracts. So voluminous is his business that he

maintains a staff of five men to supervise details.-

A year or so ago Bergen, failing in getting vaudeville or radio engagements, was seeking out an existence about New York, appearing in night clubs and as an entertainer at private parties. And it was at ope of Elsa e Maxwell’s gatherings that" Noel Cowi ard took an interest in him and persuaded Rudy Vallee to try him on his ” programme. Bergen went on the,air, ’ repeating the same material he had I used in his first radio auditions. It was ; a sensational hit. Today he is not only ' one of the most highly-paid radio perf formers with the most popular programme on the air, but he is starring . in Hollywood pictures at a weekly figure which surpasses his greatest yearly ; earnings in vaudeville days. , Bergen was born in Chicago, the son of Swedish parents. When he was ’ about 13, he discovered he had a voice with, which he could do strange tricks. Bergen realised he had the physical equipment of a ventriloquist. He developed the gift into an art. Charlie McCarthy was already taking form in his mind. He wanted as his dummy a character patterned after a tough Irish newsboy he had known. For 35 dollars he bought Charlie’s head from a Chicago carpenter named Mack. “I tacked the McCarthy to Charlie’s name in memory of Mack,” Bergen reveals. Charlie helped Bergen through North-western University. When Bergen’s study-marks dropped below passing average, he brought Charlie to school and entertained the professors vzho thought so much of the act that they gave Bergen passing grades. After graduation, Charlie and Edgar clayed vaudeville for eleven years They toured the small circuits, ultimately graduating to the two-a-day. but never were considered a top act. It looks the death of vaudeville to convert Charlie from a bright, saucy kid of the streets into a brazen, impertinent sophisticate. Bergen took McCarthy into the night clubs. He gave Charlie a monocle, a dress suit and a top hat. It was during this period he attended the Elsa Maxwell nartv, “Letter of Introduction" featuring Edgar Bergen and “Charlie McCarthy” comes to the Resent Theatre on Saturday of next week. “The Era” ouotes extracts from Irvin S. Cobb’s Hollywood dictionary:—He defines an Executive as “anybody with a Z in his name: an Associate Producer as “a relative by marriage;” an Extra as “either a star who has not yet been discovered or a star who has « been exposed.”