Read His Lips

I caught this (and another) Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy short last night on TCM. Aside from its humor, I found myself just amazed by Bergen’s talent. It’s not that you can’t see him moving his mouth when he’s speaking for McCarthy. You can, and sometimes, if you look, it’s obvious. But most of the time, he misdirects you enough with McCarthy’s movements that you forget to look.

But while the misdirection is effective, it’s really not where the magic happens. As an experiment, I watched a couple minutes of the movie with my hand in front of my face so that I couldn’t see McCarthy, only Bergen. Seeing him alone, and even watching his lips slightly moving, it still seemed like he was having a conversation with another person. He was such a master of conversational timing that he could run both sides of the banter himself, and seemingly step on his own lines with McCarthy’s, and vice versa. Try it and you’ll see.

(Phil Hendrie, of course, is able to pull off this same stunt. You wouldn’t think ventriloquism would work on the radio, and then you hear him do his thing... and he simply amazes.)

Anyway, it’s a cute piece, about 10 minutes long, and it’s a great example of why Bergen and McCarthy were so popular.



Rob