Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/092192/0921997.000

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                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 48

CANDICE BERGEN

Having It All


Actress Candice Bergen leads a life that Murphy Brown could
envy

By RICHARD CORLISS - With reporting by Martha Smilgis/Los Angeles


    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.

    All-world mom too. She quit work for three years to raise
a "dynamic, bossy social activist" named Chloe. "She's a soft
touch," her mother says. "She's always reaching out to animals
in need. I don't think she'll grow up to be a shopper, which has
been taken to be an art form in Beverly Hills. She talks about
being a circus bareback rider. And she wants to be a mother."
Just now, Chloe, 6, is "packing suitcases of food to send to the
starving children in Somalia. Bananas, onions. Things that
keep."

    See the future and smile: a third generation of perfect
Bergens. But even Candice could ache to achieve. She was a movie
star -- the Vassar vamp Lakey in The Group -- at 19, before she
knew how to act or whether she wanted to. It is said people turn
to acting in hopes of becoming other people: fuller, more
dynamic and coherent fictions of themselves. No wonder Bergen
looked uncomfortable at role playing. Who else in the world
could she care to be? And what misery could she possibly
reproduce? In a scene for The Group, Bergen was asked to cry.
She tried to think of some traumatic event whose emotional
veracity she could put on film. "The problem there, of course,"
she wrote in Knock Wood, "was that my past was short and
perfect, unblemished even by bad luck."

    Pauline Kael tried to make her cry. The film critic wrote
that Bergen's "only flair is in her nostrils." But that wasn't
quite it. Bergen looked embarrassed being ogled by the camera.
For a while, the actress was to her roles as Edgar was to
Charlie: a puppeteer of her more dangerous emotions. When she
studied motivation, you could see her lips move. But she took
her raps, hung in there, got better parts in better movies. Got
better at her job until she could carry a chic, popular sit com.
Dan Quayle can't bring her to tears.

    It's easy to see, though, why her show has roused Quayle
to expedient rage. Its liberal preaching can exasperate
conservative viewers; if the debate were to reach the Supreme
Court, it would be called Brown v. Bored of Edification. The
series sprays comic buckshot at progressive pretensions, but
typically it hits right-wing targets. In a 1989 episode,
Murphy's Myrmidon mom (Colleen Dewhurst) explained that she made
a fuss in a restaurant because "you can't let people get away
with shoddy service. It begins with overcooked meat and ends
with President Quayle."

    "We're journalists on a comedy show," Bergen says. "If the
Democrats were in the White House, we'd be taking shots at them.
They just haven't given us the fodder the Republicans have,
notably Quayle." She might also have said that the show's tone
-- brittle and bang-on -- deflects its satire. The F.Y.I. folks
are not, by and large, reasonable people. They are a gaggle of
Mensa hysterics whose banter too easily turns to bullying. But
this very stridency distances the audience from identifying
with the characters or their prejudices. These are cartoon
characters swapping gags about cartoon politicians.

    For the real skinny on Dan Quayle, then, turn not to Brown
but to Bergen. "I don't know what goes on inside Dan Quayle's
mind," Bergen says, "and I'm very happy for that mystery to stay
intact. It's a landscape I don't especially want to explore."
Then she dons her polemical safari jacket and goes Quayle
hunting.

    "Until his Murphy Brown speech in May," she says, "Quayle
had no national identity, other than being Bush's buffoon.
Meanwhile, the extreme right of the Republican Party was begging
for a leader. None of us bargained on the size of the fire storm
that was going to follow. It's been a surrealistic episode in
this country's political life. As Ross Perot said, only in
America could this become a campaign issue."

    Bergen insists her grievance is not against Quayle's
party. "I'm not a Republican," she says, "but I believe there
are a lot of Republicans -- Jack Kemp, Jim Baker -- qualified
to be President. And I don't disagree with the Republican
message about values. I do fear this country is being shredded
apart. But poverty is contributing to an erosion of family
values far more than the media are. A lot of the parents Quayle
is telling to read to their kids are parents who are holding
down two jobs to survive. They don't have time to read to their
kids."

    Bergen makes time for Chloe, even during the 21 weeks a
year that Murphy Brown is shooting. In the summer they stay
with Malle in France, and he is frequently in L.A. Through the
commuting and the controversy, Bergen keeps her daughter
shielded. Chloe doesn't even watch Murphy Brown. "She really
doesn't know what I do for a living," Mom says. "She thought I
worked in an office."


    Well, yes. An "office" on which 18 million viewers
eavesdrop every Monday night. Murphy and Candy: career moms. But
the actress has a husband as protective as the journalist could
wish for. And one with a message. "Tell Dan Quayle, from us,"
says Louis Malle, a smile crinkling his voice, "that a woman
working is good. In fact, Marilyn should go back to work."