It appears from the hats and rolled diploma's that Bergen's cast of characters has just graduated from some institution of higher (or lower) education. This picture was on the cover of Logos newsletter, 1977. (Logos was an organization of ventriloquists in Japan.) I know Charlie, Mortimer, and Effie, and the gentleman on the lower right is Lars Lundquist* who only spoke in Swedish. (*And from Kelly Asbury's book, Dummy Days, pg.37 ". . . Bergen performed with Lars for special events, including an appearance before Sweden's Royal Family. On that occasion Bergen and Lars were honored with 'The Royal Order of Vasa' and 'The Order of the North Star' conferred by King Gustav V." ) I will frame this picture and it will be given away with winner to be announced tomorrow.
Anytime that you can show the great Edgar Bergan in a new photo it gets my attention, I have never seen this photo before...its a great shot of Edgar and the gang, thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteHow marvelous! I have wondered what Lars looked like (being of Swedish heritage myself). Love seeing these old photos!
ReplyDeleteI was a kid in the late-70's and whenever you saw Edgar Bergen appear on TV it would be on The Muppet Show, Donny and Marie, Mike Douglas or something similar, and (it seemed to me) he would only appear with either Charlie or Mortimer. I think I only knew of Effie Klinker by way of one of the Maher publications. (I never saw anything from his movies or tv show until YouTube came along.) I've never even heard of Lars until this blog post. I just Googled his name and found a lot of humans named that but nothing on Bergan's Lars. I wonder if he ever mentioned in an interview why he seems to have given some of his supporting characters "early retirement?"
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that when he had his own show, he had the luxury--if not the need--to stretch out and add personalities. I'll bet whenever he made those brief appearances on other shows, he felt compelled to stick with the star-power of Charlie and Mortimer.