#mortimer snerd

Mamie Van Doren sits between Edgar Bergen's puppets Charlie McCarthy (left) and Mortimer Snerd (right) at the grand opening of The Beverly Hilton Hotel on August 7th, 1955. The opening was broadcast by NBC on The Colgate Variety Hour, co-hosted by Bergen and his puppets and Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Edgar, who found fame as a ventriloquist with his puppets in the 1930s and 1940s on the radio (!!!??!!), was actress Candice Bergen's father, and she later recalled how he treated his most famous puppet Charlie McCarthy almost like his first-born child and how irritating she found it when the media referred to her as Charlie's "little sister". For a time during her childhood, her emotionally repressed father would sit at the breakfast table with McCarthy perched on his lap and speak through the puppet (who had his own well-appointed bedroom in their Beverly Hills home) to remind Candice to "drink your milk". About her father, Candice later stated: "I find it endlessly fascinating that a reserved man, a man who had difficulty expressing his feelings, fell into the profession of a ventriloquist on radio. And that the person he created was this devil-may-care, no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners dummy. It was the dummy that wouldn't die. All the fan mail initially went to Charlie. And Edgar wasn't really welcome at parties unless Charlie was with him. It was totally surreal." The Colgate Variety Hour broadcast of The Beverly Hilton Hotel opening can be viewed below. Stars featured include Edgar Bergen and his puppets, Mamie Van Doren, Ann Miller, Irene Dunne, Shelley Winters, Dan Dailey, Charlton Heston, Walt Disney, Richard Egan, Dana Wynter, Art Linkletter, Terry Moore, Celeste Holm, Ann Blyth, and Robert Cummings among others.