If there's anything more unlikely in a medium where people can't be seen, a ventriloquist act has to be near the top of that list, but Charlie McCarthy's fast wit and roguish charm won over audiences. Edgar Bergen became interested in ventriloquism as a child and was self-taught. He created Charlie, his best known puppet, by doodling sketches of him during class in school based on a newsboy in his neighborhood . He had a woodcarver make the head and even though Charlie was spoken of as a child, he put him in a tux, complete with top hat and monocle and made him a little girl crazy. The rest, as they say, is history.

According to all accounts, Edgar Bergen was a rather shy man in real life, but with Charlie, he could say all the things he wouldn't dare say himself. In a sketch written by Arch Oboler, which by today's standards is laughably tame, "Adam and Eve" was a bit too over the top for the times and got Mae West banned from radio for 15 years. Charlie also bandied words with W. C. Fields by joking about his drinking while for his part, Fields was threatening to turn Charlie into a toothpick.

Although Bergen used other characters, notably the dim-witted Mortimer Snerd, it was Charlie that stole the show. A program that was on the air from 1937 to 1956, "The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy show" is truly the only one of it's kind.