Double Talk (1937) User Reviews

Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy are amusing enough in Double Talk

[tavm · 7/10 · 31 January 2014]

This is a Vitaphone short starring Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. The last one is a dummy who is allowed to be by himself a few times like in the bathtub and with a hard-of-hearing woman who wants to adopt him. Anyone who knows about Bergen and seen him in his vintage appearances shouldn't be surprised to see his lips move when you see Charlie talk. The voice of Charlie and the way he says some of his jokes made me laugh and some of visual touches were also funny enough like when he spits water or makes a woman's wig go up. This was one of several shorts Bergen made for Warner Bros. before he gained great fame as the star of radio. So on that note, I rather liked Double Talk.

"The further South you go, the better . . . "

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 8 February 2017]

" . . . the scenery gets," Charlie "He's no Dummy" McCarthy echoes American Founding Father Benjamin "C-Note" Franklin regarding the ins and outs of female geography. (Franklin famously anticipated White House Resident Rump's suggestion that any woman past the age of 30 should be legally required to wear a paper sack over her head when out and about in Public; please review Rump's comments about Repug Leading Lady Carly Fiorina, as well as his female airline seatmate whom he sexually assaulted--most likely after bagging her with an airline pillowcase--and so forth.) Rump has confessed that he used the billions "loaned" to him by his Red Commie KGB Puppetmaster Vlad "Mad Dog" Putin to buy up Beauty Pageants left and right for the sole purpose of being able to barge in unannounced upon contestant changing rooms full of cringing, terrorized naked teenage girls--something that neither Ben Franklin nor Chuck McCarthy could do because 1)Neither took bailout bribes from the Red Commie KGB's Blackmailer-in-Chief, and 2)Neither was a pathologically lying sociopath destined for a spot on the U.S. National Sex Offender Registry, as well as a permanent ankle tether plus a lifetime ban on coming within 1,000 miles of that magnet for teen-school-girls-on-tour, Our People's White House.

Singing In The Bath Tub

[boblipton · 7/10 · 20 September 2022]

Edgar Bergen may have been top billed, but the star of radio, television, and sixteen short subjects from 1930 through 1938 was Charlie McCarthy. In this one, Bergen is running an orphanage, and Charlie is one of his orphans who flirts outrageously with pretty ladies.

It seems odd to a modern audience how this act could work. On the radio, how could the audience see the interaction between Bergen and his dummy? In these short subjects, in the tight two-shots, how could the audience miss Bergen's mouth moving while Charlie talked? The answer is that the audience didn't care. For a one-man two-act, Bergen had fine timing.

Fair Short

[Michael_Elliott · 25 August 2010]

Double Talk (1937)

** (out of 4)

Fair short has Edgar Bergen running an orphanage for small children. When the wealthy Virginia Delaware (Florence Auer) comes to adopt a kid, Bergen tries to pawn off Charlie McCarthy but the wooden guy has different plans. I'll be honest and admit that I've enjoyed very few of the Bergen-McCarthy shorts. I'm just not a ventriloquist type of guy as I've never found them to be funny and in all honesty I see them more creepy than anything and I think that's why films like MAGIC work the subject better. This entry here isn't the worst but there just aren't enough laughs to make it worth viewing. The one funny sequence has Charlie in the tub being abused by the guy giving him a bath after he has fallen into the trash. We get a few nice one-liners here and another one later when Charlie refers to the rich woman as Frankenstein's bride but outside of these scenes there's not too much comedy. The film remains watchable simply out of the strangeness of the two characters.

Interesting...but a bit creepy.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 28 October 2011]

Perhaps it's just me, but I felt that the basic plot for this short was a bit creepy. Edgar Bergen (here called 'Dr. Bergen') owns a tiny orphanage. Huh?! Regardless of how strange this is, he announces that a rich lady is coming to pick one of the kids to adopt and they should all be on their best behavior. One of the kids, Charlie McCarthy, has no interest in being adopted by the old woman--instead he wants to make passes at the young and very pretty lady who is visiting. And, in the end, Charlie ends up mucking up things.

Among Edgar Bergen's films, this certainly it not one of the funnier ones. But, it is slight and enjoyable--with Charlie behaving in his usual cheeky manner. It's all quite interesting but certainly not a must-see.

The world's oldest orphan whose acting is truly wooden.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 27 July 2015]

The character of Charlie McCarthy was at his funniest when he was harassing W.C. Fields, but in the long series of shorts he did under the hands of Edgar Bergen at Warner Brothers (1930-1938) were a truly mixed bag. The writers of these shorts expected the audience to believe that the character of the tuxedoed, monocled McCarthy was a wise-cracking little boy, but through Bergen's lip syncing, he's given very adult things to say, well rather, a sardonic adult's things to say. In this entry, he's the bain of an orphanage whom Dr. Bergen wants to see adopted simply to get him out of the staff's hair, and in this case, he's hoping that Charlie will be adopted by the hard-of-hearing, Margaret Dumont like Florence Auer, a woman who keeps repeating the wrong word she's hearing over and over to the point of major annoyance. She's accompanied by a very lovely nurse, but of course, Charlie doesn't know that his adoption by Auer would mean he'd be around the nurse, so Charlie sabotages it. Naming both characters as states for their first and last names is totally overplayed especially when Bergen keeps changing their names to reflect different states. There's also a very unfunny scene involving his getting bathed by an attendant who seems more determined to drowned him than wash him. Fortunately, this is over in a quick 10 minutes. Bergen and McCarthy were funny in very small doses, and that usually meant them being as part of an ensemble where they weren't the focus of the story.

back in the day

[SnoopyStyle · 5/10 · 16 September 2020]

At the Bergen's Orphanage, Dr. Bergen (Edgar Bergen) tells the kids that Mrs. Virginia Delaware is coming to choose one of them to adopt. Troublesome ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy does not show up for the meeting but is instead taking a bath.

I know that Charlie McCarthy was a big deal back in the day. I can't believe that kids loved it. I have to say that I don't find it that funny. The wisecracking has some humorist content but it doesn't make me laugh. I don't think that Bergen is charismatic in any way. This was probably beloved during its initial run but I don't feel that way.

Static But Delightful Bergen and McCarthy Vehicle

[RJV · 8/10 · 18 March 2002]

Before Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy became radio stars, they starred in a series of short subjects for Warner Brothers. A total of fourteen were released between 1930 and 1937, the year Bergen and McCarthy's long running radio show debuted. DOUBLE TALK was one of the last shorts.

In this film, Bergen is head of an orphanage and Charlie is one of his charges. A dotty old matron wants to adopt McCarthy but the dummy prefers a lovely young southern belle. In order to discourage the older woman from adopting him, Charlie claims he is horribly sick. His scheme succeeds, but not in the way he desires.

In order to project the illusion of Charlie McCarthy as a real person, DOUBLE TALK not only gives him a voice, but often visually depicts him away from Bergen's lap: wading in a bathtub and sitting on a sofa. But since McCarthy is an inanimate figure, the film has very little slapstick. Most of the time, McCarthy engages in verbal humor with Bergen and other foils. The paucity of action and movement renders the film stagebound.

The short's cinematic shortcomings are compensated, however, by Bergen's effervescent performance as Charlie McCarthy. He presents McCarthy as an utter scamp, constantly insulting Bergen and others and shamelessly flirting with the southern belle. Yet one never resents him because there's a boyish good humor in his misbehaving. Indeed, his irreverence is so endearing, one actually dreads the thought of Charlie behaving himself. If he did, he would be dull. Bergen also acquits himself admirably as McCarthy's straight man, a stern but benevolent father figure. One can overlook Bergen's amateurish ventriloquism because he sincerely believes his dummy is alive, making the audience believe that Charlie McCarthy is alive. No wonder the public accepted McCarthy as a bona fide star.