Candice Bergen once went on a date with Donald Trump and was home by 9:00. She later made television history as Murphy Brown, triggered a public rebuke from the Vice President of the United States, and survived the loss of two husbands while continuing to work well into her 80s. Born on May 9, 1946, in Los Angeles, Bergen grew up in an unusual household. Her father, Edgar Bergen, was one of the world’s most famous ventriloquists, known for his wooden partner Charlie McCarthy.
Bergen has said, with her signature bluntness, that she always suspected her father preferred the dummy. Charlie got the best lines and even slept in a satin-lined case. She recalled biking through Beverly Hills as a child and attending the opening of Disneyland in 1956, remembering exactly what she wore. At 18, she enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received an unexpected phone call from a fellow student named Donald Trump.
He attended Wharton and invited her out. In interviews years later, Bergen described the date in precise detail. He picked her up in a burgundy limousine wearing a burgundy three-piece suit with burgundy patent leather boots. She said there was no physical contact whatsoever and that she was home very early.
Her overall assessment of the young Trump: “He was a good-looking guy and a douche. ”
Bergen left Penn to pursue modeling and acting. In 1967, she appeared on the cover of Vogue, shot by Bert Stern with 40 hairpieces. She lived in a particular world of New York and Los Angeles where she crossed paths with figures like Henry Kissinger, Terry Melcher, and Liza Minnelli, who had been a friend since Bergen was seven.
During this period, she also explored photojournalism. She spent 10 days with Jane Goodall in Tanzania, surviving mostly on bananas while wild baboons rattled her door each morning. She shot Muhammad Ali and covered the Ku Klux Klan for The Today Show, but eventually concluded she was not good enough to do it at the level she wanted and stopped. That decision led her, in the late 1970s, to a dinner party where she met French filmmaker Louis Malle, known for films such as Atlantic City and Au revoir les enfants.
Their first meeting was awkward, and nothing sparked. But her friend, photographer Mary Ellen Mark, told her plainly: “You’re going to marry Louis Malle. ” She was right. They married in 1980, six months after they began seriously dating.
The marriage operated across an ocean. Malle was rooted in France, while Bergen was in Los Angeles, and from 1988 onward, she spent five days a week on a CBS soundstage playing Murphy Brown. The show, created by Diane English, centered on a 40-something, twice-divorced investigative journalist who was a recovering alcoholic, ferociously competent, and unwilling to suffer fools. Bergen said she had never seen a character like that on television before.
The show was a hit from its first season. Bergen and Malle maintained their marriage through letters, calls, and commutes. Their daughter, Chloe, was born in 1985. Bergen had been ambivalent about motherhood, once writing that she wondered if she could love a baby as much as a dog, but the uncertainty disappeared once Chloe arrived.
She calls her daughter Bunny to this day. In May 1992, Murphy Brown gave birth to a child she chose to raise alone. Over 33 million people watched. Two days later, Vice President Dan Quayle delivered a speech naming the fictional character directly, saying the show was mocking the importance of fathers.
Bergen said she was frightened by the intensity of the reaction and hid behind her curtain. The show’s season premiere answered with Murphy addressing the nation from her news desk, suggesting the Vice President might expand his definition of family. Murphy Brown won 18 Emmys over 10 seasons. Bergen won five for Outstanding Lead Actress and became the highest-paid actor on American television, man or woman.
At the 2024 Emmy Awards, at age 78, she stepped on stage and joked about J. D. Vance’s “childless cat ladies” remark, saying: “Oh, how far we’ve come. Today, a Republican candidate would never attack a woman for having kids.
So, as they say, my work here is done. ”
Through the success, Malle was dying. He had been diagnosed with lymphoma, which progressed through the later years of the show. He died on Thanksgiving Day, 1995, at their Beverly Hills home.
He was 63. Chloe was 10 and took it upon herself to care for her father, reading to him every night. On one trip to Disneyland, she returned with Goofy slippers, which Louis wore until the end. He was buried in them.
Bergen did not date for three years after his death. She worked to stay sane. In 1999, 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt and his wife, Marilyn Berger, decided she should meet Marshall Rose, a New York real estate developer and philanthropist who had also lost his spouse. They married in June 2000.
Rose oversaw significant New York projects including the IAC building and the renovation of Madison Square Garden. He served 30 years on the New York Public Library board and loved the Knicks, books, and his golden doodle named Jerry. Bergen said in a 2015 interview that she prioritized her marriage above almost everything else, asking only that work not keep her away from her husband for more than a week or two. Marshall Rose died on February 15, 2025, at home in New York City, surrounded by family, from complications related to Parkinson’s disease.
He was 88. Bergen and Rose were three months shy of their 25th wedding anniversary. Bergen turned 80 on May 9, 2025. She planned a dinner with 50 people but said that just being in the country with her daughter and grandchildren was the dream.
She said she never asked Chloe to have children but was grateful she did, describing her grandchildren with affection. Her grandson Arty gave her the nickname Toto when he was 18 months old, and it has stuck. She has been called Charlie McCarthy’s sister, Murphy Brown, a feminist icon, and the highest-paid actor on television.
At 80, she is still working, still sharp, and still finding a way to make grief and joy sit in the same sentence.
