In mid-September 1978, Bergen announced that he was retiring after more than 50 years in show business, and sending his monocled, top-hatted partner, Charlie McCarthy, to the National Museum of American History, at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He opened at Caesar's Palace Hotel Las Vegas on September 27, for a two-week "Farewell to Show Business" engagement. Three days later, on September 30, 1978, he died of kidney disease. Bergen was interred with his parents (who are buried under their true surname of "Berggren"), in Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, California.