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Frances Bergen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frances Bergen, born Frances Westerman (September 14, 1922 - October 2, 2006) was an American actress and fashion model. She was the wife of famous ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and the mother of actress Candice and Kris Bergen.
She was born in Birmingham, Alabama to William and Lillie Mae Westerman. While in New York City, she became a successful John Robert Powers model. She was "the Chesterfield Girl" and "the Ipana Girl" in magazines and on billboards. As a Powers model she was known as Frances Westcott.
Frances met Edgar Bergen when she was 19 years old and attended a recording of one of his radio programs. He was two decades older than she. Nonetheless, they married on June 28, 1945 and remained happily married until Edgar's death in 1978 at age 75.
As an actress, Frances Bergen had supporting or minor roles in a number of films. She made her debut in Titanic (1953), after which she appeared in Robert Z. Leonard's, Her Twelve Men, and Douglas Sirk's Interlude (1957). She returned to films in the 1980s, with small roles in American Gigolo, The Sting II, The Muppets Take Manhattan, The Morning After, and Made in America, among others. She also made appearances on television, with guest starring roles on The Millionaire, The Dick Powell Show, Barnaby Jones, MacGyver, and Murder, She Wrote.
She also appeared on two episodes of Murphy Brown, her daughter's hit show, including Part One of the series finale in 1998. She dated actor Craig Stevens after the death of his wife of many years, Alexis Smith.
Frances Bergen died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of undisclosed causes on October 2, 2006, aged 84 ([1]).