Happy Birthday, Candice Bergen, Film and Television Star

Candice Bergen was born in Beverly Hills, Calif. on May 9, 1946. Her father, Edgar Bergen, was a famous ventriloquist with his wooden sidekick Charlie McCarthy, and her mother Frances was an actress, according to Bergen's biography on Yuddy. As a child, Candice was a frequent guest on her father’s radio program. She attended a Swiss finishing school and then went on to study at the University of Pennsylvania. She also worked as a Ford model and indulged in her passion for photography.

After portraying a lesbian college student in the 1966 Sidney Lumet film “The Group,” Bergen appeared in several more movies, including “Carnal Knowledge” (1971), in which she starred with Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel. At the same time, Bergen pursued a successful career in photography; her photos were published in such magazines as Life and Esquire, reports Yuddy. In a 1970 profile, Time magazine compared Bergen’s public persona to the character Daisy Buchanan from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby.”

In 1975, Bergen made comedic history as the first female host of “Saturday Night Live.” This success at comedy led her to take on the role of the tone-deaf ex-wife of Burt Reynolds’ character in 1979’s “Starting Over.” Her efforts landed an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Bergen picked up her best-known role in the late 1980s as the TV journalist Murphy Brown in the CBS sitcom of the same name. The comedy lasted for ten seasons (1988–1998), during which time Bergen won five Emmys and two Golden Globes, just some of the awards listed in a profile of Bergen by TV Guide.

In 1992, Bergen went head to head with then-Vice President Dan Quayle when he condemned her character’s decision to bear a child alone, a highly publicized event that Time magazine covered. In her acceptance speech for her Emmy that same year, Bergen jokingly thanked Quayle for the award.

Bergen’s first husband, famed French director Louis Malle, died in 1995, transforming her into a real-life single mom until her 2000 marriage to New York real estate mogul and philanthropist Marshall Rose. After the 1998 conclusion of “Murphy Brown,” Mike Wallace of CBS’s “60 Minutes” sat down with Bergen in the small French village she called home to discuss her past as an actress and her plans for the future.

In a 2005 interview with AARP The Magazine, Bergen discussed her anxiety about separation from her college-bound daughter, and her hope for many more years of health and happiness. "I started getting very teary and depressed about anything that revolved around Chloe," she said. "I'd tell myself, I'm not going to make this into a personal tragedy; I can do this."

More recently, Bergen has taken smaller roles in such films as “Miss Congeniality” (2000) and “Sweet Home Alabama” (2002). She joined the cast of “Boston Legal” in 2005, and earned an Emmy nomination in 2006. Bergen recently completed a remake of the 1939 George Cukor film “The Women," and also starred in “Bride Wars” with actress Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway, according to her Internet Movie Database profile.

In 2008, Bergen became one of "The Women on the Web," a group of highly accomplished women who created a Web site, WoWoW.com, that publishes intelligent "conversations," as well as news and features, aimed at women over 40.