The wooden puppet known as Charlie McCarthy was a precocious adolescent sporting a monocle and top hat, loved by the public for being a flirt and a wise-guy, and a raffish brat who continually got the better of his "guardian," mild-mannered ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (1903-1978). The comedy duo got their start in vaudeville and gave their last performance on television, but—amazingly—they found their greatest fame and success in the most unlikely venue for any ventriloquist: radio. Since the need for illusion was completely obviated by radio, whose audiences wouldn't be able to tell whether or not Bergen's lips were moving, the strength of Bergen and McCarthy as a comedy team was the same as it was for Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello: they were funny. Bergen created and maintained in Charlie a comic persona so strong that audiences almost came...