Knock Wood with Karen Tongson

Sentimental Garbage

Justice for Dumb Women

Sex And The City, Arts, Musicals, Society & Culture, Culture, Queer, Movies, Camp, Literature, Tv

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2019

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You know Candice Bergen, even if you don't think you do: you've seen her reject Carrie Bradshaw as Enid, the editor of Vogue, and you've seen her try to blow up a Miss America pageant in Miss Congeniality. But there's more to this actor than you might think: she was born into Hollywood royalty, as the daughter of famous ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, became the "sliding doors" Sharon Tate during the summer of the Manson murders, and was the first woman to ever host SNL. In her memoir Knock Wood, she describes with wry humour her Hollywood childhood and what it's like to grow up as a sex symbol in the 1970s. We talk about the hypocrisy of the hippie movement, the weirdness of ventriloquism, the death of vaudeville, the perils of growing up Californian, and why if you can't date your father you might as well get a horse. Music by Harry Harris, artwork Gavin Day. Recorded at Acast studios, produced by Caroline O'Donoghue and mixed by Hannah Varrall.

You can buy Karen's book WHY KAREN CARPENTER MATTERS here: https://amzn.to/2IO3ljq

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi and welcome to another episode of Sentimental Garbage, the podcast where we talk about the
0:08.3	chicklet that made us who we are.
0:10.2	My name is Karenadunahoo and I'm an author, a journalist and an aging vaudeville star.
0:14.4	Joining me is Karen Tonson, author, podcaster, and winner of the best supporting actress award
0:18.7	for her role in the film Gandy.
0:21.0	Hi Karen. Hello.
0:24.0	Hi, so great to have you here.
0:25.0	So today we're talking about Candies Bergen's memoir, Knock Wood.
0:29.3	What made you choose this book?
0:30.3	It's such an interesting choice. Well, you know, the thing is I haven't had a lot of time for recreational reading in a long time because
0:38.6	most of the reading I have to do is professional.
0:40.5	I'm a college professor and so I have to keep up with the literature but I don't get to read
0:45.4	contemporary literature or and you know stuff for fun very much and the stuff that I love to
0:51.1	devour and I suppose you could call it a guilty pleasure though
0:54.4	guilty pleasures aren't really my thing. I feel like all pleasures should be guiltless
0:58.4	but I used to read a lot of celebrity biographies whenever I had a moment and
1:06.0	Candice Burginsnachwood was a formative one for me when I was growing up.
1:07.2	I remember stumbling upon it.
1:09.2	And it had so many different resonances for me. And the same time it's not like a book that you'd readily admit was like a kind of touchstone text for you, right? So when thinking about stuff that I don't know triggered some form of sentimentality in oneself even if the book itself is not
1:26.9	Sentimental I had to go to this yeah and I'm candies Bergen. It's interesting because I'm over on this side of the Atlantic.
1:33.0	She is someone who when you said, I was like, oh, that lady from Miss Congeniality and she, yeah, I'm sorry.
1:40.0	And she played Edna in Sex and the City. She was the Vogue editor and she made several iconic
	...

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