1903–1978 · American ventriloquist and radio comedian
Bergen (16 February 1903 – 30 September 1978) was the American ventriloquist whose dummies — the wisecracking Charlie McCarthy and the slow-witted Mortimer Snerd — became national radio stars on a medium where nobody could see the trick. From April 1954 onward American joke columns printed the sincerity gag as Snerd’s line, and a 1960 university bulletin still called it “Mortimer Snerd’s definition of sincerity” — the earliest appearance of the wording exactly as it circulates today. That does not make Bergen the coiner: a variant was already in print in July 1951 with no connection to him, and mid-century gag columns routinely hung stray jokes on whichever comic character was popular. No source documents who wrote it.