Edgar Bergen - Family

Family

In 1941, Bergen met 19 year old Frances Westerman, who had graduated from Los Angeles High School the year before, in the audience of Bergen's radio program as the guest of a member of his staff. Sitting in the front row, the young fashion model's legs caught 38 year old Bergen's attention and he asked to meet her. The two were married in Mexico after years of long-distance courtship, on June 28, 1945. On May 9, 1946 Frances gave birth to future actress Candice Bergen, whose first performances were on Bergen's radio show. They also became the parents of film and television editor Kris Bergen, born on October 12, 1961.

On September 30, 1978, Bergen died in his sleep of kidney disease in Las Vegas, Nevada, at age 75. He died at Caesar's Palace Hotel, just three days after opening, Wednesday September 27, for a two-week engagement that was to be part of his farewell to show business. It was in mid-September that he had announced that he was retiring after 56 years in show business and sending his monocled, top-hatted partner to the Smithsonian Institution.

Today, the iconic wooden Charlie McCarthy rests in Washington D.C.'s Smithsonian Institution. Bergen was interred with his parents (who are buried under their true surname of 'Berggren'), in Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, California. Edgar Bergen's wife of 33 years, Frances Westerman Bergen, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, on October 2, 2006, aged 84, from undisclosed causes. She is also buried in Inglewood Cemetery. In 1990, Bergen was elected to the Radio Hall of Fame, the same year that The Charlie McCarthy Show was selected as an honored program. A message in the closing credits dedicates The Muppet Movie (which featured Edgar and Charlie in their last screen appearance) to the memory and magic of Edgar. In 1991, the United States Postal Service honored him with a 29-cent commemorative stamp.