Edgar Bergen was born in Chicago on February 16, 1903, to a Swedish family. He taught himself ventriloquism from a pamphlet he bought for 25 cents, when he was only 11. In his senior year in high school, he would notice a "little Irish newsboy" working by the school, and sketch him. Bergen then paid the local bartender/wood carver, Theodore Mack, to create a dummy based on that sketch. That dummy was the soon-to-be-famous, smart-mouthed eighth grader, Charlie McCarthy, who took his first name from the newsboy who inspired him and his last name from the man who carved him. Bergen and McCarthy became popular very quickly, and soon the nature of their performances became a bit too classy for a newsboy to attend, so Charlie changed clothes. New York's Helen Morgan club was the first to see Charlie in his famous top hat and monocle.

Bergen's first appearance on the radio came in December, 1936, and he would become most famous through this medium. That's what made him so amazing; a part of the illusion of ventriloquism is the dummy, and Bergen's radio audience could not see Charlie. The illusion was nevertheless so convincing that people would forget that Charlie and his friends weren't real. On the set of the show, people would even comment that Charlie needed to speak with his mouth closer to the microphone! Bergen and McCarthy's act became increasingly famous, and would never have trouble in finding an audience. In one audience Bergen would find himself captivated by an audience member he would describe simply as "the girl with with the long legs." That girl was model Frances Westerman, the girl he would later marry. Frances was a talented singer too, and would later have the pleasure of singing for her husband's audience on his show on November 6, 1955.

The couple's first daughter, Candice, was born May 9, 1946. For the radio program, Bergen developed other characters, notably the slow-witted Mortimer Snerd and the man-hungry Effie Clinker. The star, however, was Charlie, who was always presented as a child, albeit in top-hat, cape, and monocle, a debonair, girl-crazy, child-about-town. As a child, and a wooden one at that, Charlie could get away with double entendre that adult humans could not, even in those more-censored times.

Bergen was not the most technically skilled ventriloquist; Charlie McCarthy frequently twitted him for moving his lips; but his sense of comedic timing was superb and he handled Charlie's snappy dialogue with aplomb. Bergen's brilliant wit in creating McCarthy's striking personality and that of his other characters was the making of the show. And, moving his lips hardly mattered, as he was a radio ventriloquist.

Bergen and McCarthy are sometimes credited with "saving the world" because, on the night of October 30, 1938, when Orson Welles performed his War of the Worlds radio play that so panicked the nation, most of the American public had tuned in to hear Bergen and McCarthy and never heard Welles's play.

After the radio show ended, Bergen and McCarthy appeared on the TV show, Do You Trust Your Wife? and also in live performance. In 1962, Kris Bergen was born. Bergen finally had a flesh-and-blood son, and because Kris had his own flesh-and-blood sister, he was spared the jokes about his "wooden brothers." Kris had a strong bond with his aging father and would usually accompany Bergen on his performances.

In his later years, when television began to steal radio's audience, Bergen branched out with several television specials, the television quiz show Do You Trust Your Wife. He appeared as the shy Norwegian suitor in I Remember Mama (1948). He also appeared in Captain China (1949) and Don't Make Waves (1965). He and McCarthy appeared in The Goldwyn Follies (1938) and in The Muppet Movie (1979) (at the encouragement of his daughter). It was his last appearance and the film was dedicated to him. Unfortunately, his health was starting to deteriorate, affecting his ability to perform. He could still draw an audience, though, and continued to perform up until the very day of his death. He died almost immediately after his last performance, on September 29, 1978, at the age of 75. He was interred in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.

He is a member of the Radio Hall of Fame. He attended Northwestern University, but did not graduate. Later the school gave him an honorary degree as "Master of Innuendo and Snappy Comeback".