Despite a lifetime in acting and performance, Parents Weekend keynote speaker Candice Bergen P'08 said she was nervous at the prospect of following up Dustin Hoffman's P'08 speech last year and speaking in front of her daughter, her daughter's friends and President Ruth Simmons.
"The pressure is enormous," she told The Herald a few hours before her talk.
But the Oscar nominee and five-time Emmy winner needn't have worried. The capacity crowd of Brown parents, who saw her in the 1960s and 1970s in "The Sand Pebbles" and "Carnal Knowledge," and students, who grew up knowing her as CBS's "Murphy Brown," ate up every word of her lecture.
Humorous, self-deprecating and candid, Bergen discussed growing up famous, her career as a photojournalist, politics, aging and, of course, Murphy Brown.
"The 10 years I spent on 'Murphy Brown' will be an experience I will always treasure," she said. "When Murphy ended, I knew I would never find a role that was as fulfilling, rewarding and as funny."
Her portrayal of the star investigative reporter on the sitcom not only earned her five Emmys and two Golden Globe awards, but also attracted unexpected political scrutiny in 1992, when then-Vice President Dan Quayle criticized Bergen's character for deciding to become a single mother.
"It's just hard to describe what it's like to wake up and get your New York Times and open it to see yourself as Murphy holding the baby, in the center of the front page above the fold, with a picture of Dan Quayle one side and George Bush - you know, the other one - on the other," Bergen said.
In addition to the attention from the Quayle speech, Bergen said "Murphy Brown" was important in addressing other political and social issues, especially those concerning women. When Murphy discovered she had breast cancer in the mid-1990s, Bergen said the show raised awareness of the disease and led to an increase in the number of women getting mammograms.
The daughter of famous radio performer and ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, Bergen said she grew up the less-famous sibling of her "brother" - her father's dummy Charlie McCarthy.
"Of course I hated him," Bergen said as pictures depicting the Bergen family - dummies included - were projected on a large screen. "I was routinely greeted with, 'So you must be Charlie's sister. I bet you're no dummy!' "
"It got really old," she added.
She also showed examples from her career as a photojournalist. Bergen, who worked for Esquire Magazine and New York Magazine, used her celebrity status to get access to photographic opportunities, including a rare shot of Charlie Chaplin with Groucho Marx. She also photographed boxer Muhammad Ali, Black Panthers founder Huey Newton and bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger in his pre-gubernatorial days.
Bergen was self-deprecating when speaking about her early acting career, which she said she may not have taken as seriously as she could have. She quoted a review of her performance in her first film, "The Group," saying, "One critic wrote, 'Candice Bergen followed in the footsteps of Charlie McCarthy and managed to be more wooden than he was.' "
During a period of insecurity about her career, Bergen said she used to make the excuse that she was a photojournalist dabbling in acting. She said it wasn't until 1971, when she starred in "Carnal Knowledge" with Jack Nicholson, Ann-Margret and Art Garfunkel, that she began felt confident in her acting.
"On 'Carnal,' I learned to respect the craft of acting, and equally important, to respect myself as an actress," she said.
Bergen said her decision to focus on comedy came when filming 1978's "Starting Over." In a scene from the movie, Bergen's character attempts to woo back her ex-husband, played by Burt Reynolds, by singing a terrible rendition of "Better than Ever." Her role would garner her an Oscar nomination.
Bergen's mother's singing voice wowed Cole Porter and Fred Astaire, Bergen said. "I inherited the knowledge that sometimes (talents) not only skip a generation, but sometimes run screaming from it. Ironically, it was the singing non-ability that helped feed my love of laughter."
The 59-year-old Bergen also addressed what she considers one of the most pressing issues of her generation - aging.
"As I watch my mother age, I see my own reaction mirrored in the eyes of my daughter - basically, pure terror," Bergen said. "I sat in with (my daughter) in one of her comparative literature seminars last year and fell asleep in front of all the students. ... I've been taking to thinking that this past summer is the summer we got old."
She again broached on the topic of aging, although inadvertently, during the question-and-answer session that followed a video montage of her work when, to the amusement of herself and the audience, she forgot two of the questions she was asked.
The lecture was well received by Brown students and parents, many of whom related to Bergen easily.
"It was wonderful how natural she was," Jennifer Winograd P'09 said. "It didn't seem scripted at all, like having a conversation. I could really relate to the answers about getting older. You can really relate to her as a mother."
"It was terrific," Don Gordon P'06 said. "I enjoyed the insight she gave about her childhood and growing up."
Bergen's lecture, titled "A Conversation with Candice Bergen," was sponsored by the Creative Arts Council, which has brought Hoffman and Martin Scorsese to speak at Brown in past years.
