“Rubbing alcohol,” Mortimer Snerd once observed, “doesn’t improve its flavor.” Snerd, of course, was a dummy, but the Jim Beam Distilling Company didn’t hold that against him or his pal Charlie McCarthy in 1976 when it issued a pair of collectible china decanters in the image of the two wooden stars of Edgar Bergen’s Charlie McCarthy Show. Bruce DuMont, host of WLS’s Beyond the Beltway and founder of the Museum of Broadcast Communications, isn’t sure how a set ended up in the museum’s collection, but says Bergen’s widow requested that they not be displayed. So the hooch–which collectors don’t advise drinking, as aging it in ceramic doesn’t do wonders for the taste either–is going on the block at the garage sale and auction the museum’s holding this Saturday to help fund completion of its new home at State and Kinzie.
