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that “When Edgar Bergen was a high school student in
Chicago in the post-war period, he got the notion that he wanted a dummy so that he could become a ventriloquist. He came to Mr. Mack’s workshop who assigned Marshall to the problem. Bergen wanted a fresh Irish kid, resembling a newsboy that he knew, and the present Charlie McCarthy was made and sold to Bergen for $ 35 in 1923. However, it was not until 1933 that Charlie and Bergen breezed into Broadway and were an instantaneous hit which was climaxed by their appearance on the radio.”
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sent the young Welles a telegram on the subject: "This only goes to prove, my beamish boy, that the intelligent people were all listening to the dummy, and that all the dummies were listening to you." By 1944, Welles had become a recurring guest, with the dummy puncturing the pomposity of the genius.
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Charlie's personality was that of a mischievous little boy, who could wisecrack, misbehave and flirt shamelessly in a way that Bergen could not. Bergen's original dummy was built by noted carpenter/dummy-maker
Theodore Mack, and was later rebuilt by Frank Marshall. A 1938 magazine article reported
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359:, as guest judges of the Bogen County Fair beauty contest. Bergen died in 1978 shortly after filming this sequence, and the film is dedicated to his memory. One of the original Charlie dummies is now part of the permanent collection of the
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in 1936, where they proved such a hit that the following year the network gave them a starring role on
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In 1977, Charlie appeared with Bergen and
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Barfield, Ray (2010). Sterling, Christopher H.; O'Dell, Cary (eds.).
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This article is about the ventriloquist dummy. For other uses, see
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The
Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic
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Bergen and McCarthy made their final film appearance in
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