IN 1946, AMERICA LOOKS AT BABY CANDICE Bergen: "What a beautiful child."
At 10: "And so well behaved."
At 19: "Now she's in pictures."
In her 20s: "She takes good ones too."
Mid-30s: "She has a great marriage."
Late 30s: "She writes a fine book."
Later 30s: "She has a cute daughter."
Early 40s: "She's a sitcom star."
And this May: "Dan Quayle hates her."
Damn that Candy -- she's got it all.
You know Murphy Brown. Scrappy journalista for the TV newsmagazine F.Y.I. and, as of late last season, harried single mother. The woman who has it all but ain't got nobody. On the job she is feminism's point guard, schmoozing with the big boys. She gave Ed Meese the Heimlich maneuver. Oh, and Muammar Gaddafi just called. She will even tell herself, "I'm living a highly complete life here." High, for sure. Complete, forget it. Years ago, convinced it was time to be a mother, Murphy nearly persuaded herself to be artificially fertilized by her best pal, Frank. She admits she has sex "about as often as we get a Democrat for President." Her pile-driving perfectionism has often scared suitors off. The figure on the pedestal gets men thinking she's made of marble.
You know Candice Bergen, the actress who plays Murphy -- and the worst person for the Vice President to pick a fight with. An admired woman, as articulate as she is opinionated. And (we're all tired of hearing this) classically beautiful. A modern-day Norman Rockwell might choose her face to represent traditional American values: clarity, intelligence, drive. Radiant normality. Most of all, privilege.
Privilege begins with a lucky roll of the genes. Candice's father was the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, a dapper vaudevillian in top hat and tux, who with his monocled dummy, Charlie McCarthy, made every radio appearance seem like a Broadway opening night. Her mother is Frances Westerman, a fashion model renowned in her youth as "the Ipana Girl." Edgar and Frances made quite a pair: handsome, smart, moneyed, decent. And they made quite a daughter, one at ease with her favors, slow to complain about being too lovely or too little loved. If aloof Edgar at times seemed closer to Charlie than to Candy, that constituted benign neglect, not child abuse. Candice's lucid autobiography, Knock Wood (1984), was no Daddy Dearest. It was a sharing of Kismet's gifts.
She did so many things early and easily. Photojournalist on four continents. Writer with a keen eye and the instinct not to wound. Later, wife of French filmmaker Louis Malle (Pretty Baby, Au Revoir les Enfants) and nurturer of a tricoastal marriage in California, New York and France.