Frowning Charlie McCarthy

I was asked about a picture of Frowning Charlie McCarthy by one of our followers here on Ventriloquist Central and I told him I knew that the frowning Charlie was done for a movie but I could not recall which movie it was.

The next day I had an email from him with all the information so I thought I would share it!!

Dear Dan,

I did some research today trying to find out what movie Frowning Charlie was used in. Reading a 1989 newspaper featuring a traveling puppet display Frowning Charlie was used in the 1947 Walt Disney movie “Fun and Fancy, Free.” Its seen towards the end as Charlie is imitating the giant and is very interesting seeing Charlie talk with a different facial expression…

Nicky

frowning charlie

Dan
www.ventriloquistcentral.com

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Ventriloquist Central is the brainchild of Dan Willinger and Steve Hurst. Dan is a ventriloquism enthusiast and ventriloquist figure collector. He has been collecting for over 25 years. He created the Ventriloquist Central Collection. It now has over 100 ventriloquist figures and over 50 of them are Frank Marshall figures. Steve is a ventriloquist as well as builder of ventriloquist figures. He also has a background in sales, marketing, building websites and computers. Because they both love the art of ventriloquism, the website Ventriloquist Central was born. For more information about the website, go to: http://www.ventriloquistcentral.com

Copyright 2013 by Dan Willinger and Steve Hurst

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5 Responses to Frowning Charlie McCarthy

  1. Ted Nunes says:

    Frowny Charlie also turned up in an early Edgar Bergen TV special. There’s a clip on youtube.

    That Charlie is interesting but kind of disturbs me for some reason. Most of the time Bergen got all that great character out of him using just the basic movements; suddenly seeing an extreme expression on Charlie’s face seems so out of left field to me. For that matter, I find it jarring whenever you see his eyes move. I saw that in a clip from one of the movies–don’t know how often that happened.

    It’s strange getting these small tastes of Bergen’s movie career through youtube. Every so often, some new (old) treasure turns up. When I was a kid, he was still appearing on TV shows (and the Muppet Movie; near and dear to my heart) but they just didn’t show his early movies and TV work.

    I just had a great “what-if” idea: a movie where Mortimer gets kicked in the head and becomes handsome and suave. (that would be a collectible figure.) To the time machine!

  2. Bill Matthews says:

    The frowning Charlie was also seen in a Bergen Thanksgiving special. Bergen and Charlie were both dressed as pilgrims in the stocks and Charlie was none to happy about it.

  3. James Manalli says:

    This means the frowning Charlie certainly predates both Walter AND Mr. Horowitz!

  4. BILL NELSON says:

    I created MR. HOROWITZ years before I heard of, and owned, FROWNING CHARLIE.
    The folded crossed arms was my original concept also.

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