Bergen's daughter has fluent voice of her own

By Bob Thomas

HOLLYWOOD PA reluctant actress, Candice Bergen, may well prove one of the more successful ones.

She is headed in that direction. everything about her promises success. For her

second film she is co-starring with Steve McQueen in the $11 million "The Sand Pebbles." She has the back-

ground famous father, con-

tinental education) and looks tawny. fashion-model figurge that make the magazines flip.

She is also a fluent talker,

especially about Candice Bergen. That's how her billings reads ("How can I go through life with a name like Candy?").

Acting came to her as an afterthought.

"I saw it as a chance to provide the independence to,

pursue what I really wanted to do, which was photography and writing," she explains.

CANDY CARRIES her independence like a banner and she admitted it has been a source of friction between herself and her father, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen.

"I've always been antidiscipline," she admitted. "This has frustrated my father, poor man, because he is by nature a disciplinarian.

"He was able to exert discipline on me because I re-

lied on him for financial support. Therefore the way for me to break his hold was to start earning my own monI went to New York ey. from the University of Pennsylvania, got my own apartment and started working.

"It was hard on my father but it wasn't easy for me either. After the first two months of living alone I got terribly blue and wondered. is this what I really want?'

"THE WORST came when I got sick and had to call a doctor. I had never had to call a doctor for myself before. I didn't even know, any doctors in New York;'

"

Candy survived and she moved to a larger, more cheerful apartment at the urging of her tearful mother. "As soon as I started fur-

nishing it I began to feel all right," Candy recalled. "It was living in a bare room that depressed me."

She became one of the

darlings of the fashion world. Her fame as a model brought an offer to appear in "The Group." To her father's despair she took the role of a lesbian.

"The picture couldn't have been better for me," she' commented. "How can you fail when you have only five minutes of scenes, play a controversial role and make a striking appearance? It was over before the audi-

ence had a chance to ask, "Can she act?'"

Can she? "I don't know yet," she admitted.