Before Lucy, before Oprah, there was Mrs. Goldberg

Posted
By Michael Orbach
Oy, I’m getting ferklempt just thinking about “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg,” a documentary by Aviva Kempner.
For those of us not familiar with the heyday of radio and the early years of television, matronly Molly Goldberg, created and played by Gertrude Berg, was America’s Jewish mother. From 1929 until 1956, her name was ubiquitous on radio and television. Her show’s first incarnation was a daily 15-minute radio broadcast called “The Rise of the Goldbergs.” In 1949 she made the jump to television where “The Goldbergs” became arguably TV’s first truly successful sitcom.
Gertrude Berg, whose real name was Tillie Edelstein, was born in 1898 to a Jewish immigrant family in Harlem. Her acting career began in skits she performed in her family’s Catskills resort. Her radio and television shows stand as a landmark to tolerance and a forgotten chapter in modern Jewish history; a moral “Seinfeld” for the fifties, or a Jewish “Father Knows Best,” as Molly Goldberg and her family confronted the history of the old world and the wonder of the new one in America.
“Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg,” a history of the Goldberg radio and television programs, is a clever documentary that mixes black-and-white footage from the thirties, forties and fifties into a seamless narrative. Commentators in the film range from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Norman Lear, who created “All in the Family” and “The Jeffersons,” and even clips of an interview Berg gave to Edward R. Murrow. The title stems from a trademark element of the shows, epitomizing the old tenements in New York where no one had phones and the easiest way to reach a neighbor was simply to yell “Yoo hoo!” out the window.
“The Rise of the Goldbergs” began a week after Black Tuesday, the 1929 stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression, with the tagline a “Place in every heart and a finger in every pie.” The show proved so popular that when a sore throat put Gertrude out of commission, NBC received over 100,000 pieces of mail. The show’s success was attributed to its authenticity and to its writing, which Berg did herself. The show in its time period was also a play in contrast; Father Coughlin’s anti-Semitic rants on the radio, while a station away on the dial Molly Goldberg lectured about family values with the show’s crazy old Uncle Davy character played by a legendary Yiddish actor, Menashe Skulnik. The show’s message, the documentary notes, was  “everything is going to be okay.” It was a beacon of stability in very troubling times.
The show was so popular that Berg has been described as the Oprah of her day. In a poll of the most respected women in America, she came in second to Eleanor Roosevelt; a poll released the same year that listed the most successful women in America, put Berg first, with Mrs. Roosevelt second. Unsubstantiated lore from the Depression-era claims Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, “I didn’t get us out of the Depression, Molly Goldberg did.”
The radio show was second in the ratings to the blaxploitation radio program, “Amos and Andy,” though “The Rise of the Goldbergs” presented a far different, positive stereotype: a wise, caring and patient Jewish mother, who was, in her own way, hip. For her role as Molly Goldberg, Berg won the very first Emmy for Best Actress, awarded in 1950.
Behind the stereotype of the Jewish mother, Berg was a canny and progressive Park Avenue feminist who created a multimedia empire. Goldberg merchandising extended to comic strips, advice columns, and in probably the earliest example of a celebrity clothing line, Goldberg-inspired housedress patterns. In a vaudeville tour one summer, Berg grossed $10,000 a week. As Molly, Berg advocated for war bonds and took on some social causes: a rock is thrown through the Goldberg’s window in one episode, a reference to Kristallnacht, and to the Goldberg family’s worries about Jewish relatives in Europe during World War II.
The TV show’s eventual cancellation came about not because of anti-Semitism, but ironically enough, because of its own success. Philip Loeb, the actor who played Jake Goldberg, Molly’s husband, was blacklisted for suspected Communist activities and the show’s sponsor pulled out. Berg fought for a year-and-a-half while the show was off the air, to save Loeb’s job, even attempting to intercede with J. Edgar Hoover. Eventually, she gave up and Loeb was replaced by a series of actors. However in Goldberg’s 18 month absence from television, another matriarch, Lucille Ball, had arrived, and the rest is history. “The Goldberg’s” limped along for a few years but in 1955 Berg called it quits. She went on to star on Broadway, winning a Tony award; she wrote a bestselling book; and passed away in 1966.
If there is any possible criticism of this enjoyable documentary it’s that Kempner perhaps goes a bit far in making Goldberg’s case. Goldberg, important as she was, didn’t pull America out of the Depression. And despite her progressive-for-her-time outlook, Berg was no revolutionary. As she once put it: “Anything that will bother people ... unions, fund raising, Zionism, socialism, intergroup relations. ... I keep things average. I don’t want to lose friends.”
But so what? On some level, Molly Goldberg made it okay to be Jewish in America.

A review of Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

By Michael Orbach
Oy, I’m getting ferklempt just thinking about “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg,” a documentary by Aviva Kempner.
For those of us not familiar with the heyday of radio and the early years of television, matronly Molly Goldberg, created and played by Gertrude Berg, was America’s Jewish mother. From 1929 until 1956, her name was ubiquitous on radio and television. Her show’s first incarnation was a daily 15-minute radio broadcast called “The Rise of the Goldbergs.” In 1949 she made the jump to television where “The Goldbergs” became arguably TV’s first truly successful sitcom.
Gertrude Berg, whose real name was Tillie Edelstein, was born in 1898 to a Jewish immigrant family in Harlem. Her acting career began in skits she performed in her family’s Catskills resort. Her radio and television shows stand as a landmark to tolerance and a forgotten chapter in modern Jewish history; a moral “Seinfeld” for the fifties, or a Jewish “Father Knows Best,” as Molly Goldberg and her family confronted the history of the old world and the wonder of the new one in America.
“Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg,” a history of the Goldberg radio and television programs, is a clever documentary that mixes black-and-white footage from the thirties, forties and fifties into a seamless narrative. Commentators in the film range from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Norman Lear, who created “All in the Family” and “The Jeffersons,” and even clips of an interview Berg gave to Edward R. Murrow. The title stems from a trademark element of the shows, epitomizing the old tenements in New York where no one had phones and the easiest way to reach a neighbor was simply to yell “Yoo hoo!” out the window.
“The Rise of the Goldbergs” began a week after Black Tuesday, the 1929 stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression, with the tagline a “Place in every heart and a finger in every pie.” The show proved so popular that when a sore throat put Gertrude out of commission, NBC received over 100,000 pieces of mail. The show’s success was attributed to its authenticity and to its writing, which Berg did herself. The show in its time period was also a play in contrast; Father Coughlin’s anti-Semitic rants on the radio, while a station away on the dial Molly Goldberg lectured about family values with the show’s crazy old Uncle Davy character played by a legendary Yiddish actor, Menashe Skulnik. The show’s message, the documentary notes, was  “everything is going to be okay.” It was a beacon of stability in very troubling times.
The show was so popular that Berg has been described as the Oprah of her day. In a poll of the most respected women in America, she came in second to Eleanor Roosevelt; a poll released the same year that listed the most successful women in America, put Berg first, with Mrs. Roosevelt second. Unsubstantiated lore from the Depression-era claims Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, “I didn’t get us out of the Depression, Molly Goldberg did.”
The radio show was second in the ratings to the blaxploitation radio program, “Amos and Andy,” though “The Rise of the Goldbergs” presented a far different, positive stereotype: a wise, caring and patient Jewish mother, who was, in her own way, hip. For her role as Molly Goldberg, Berg won the very first Emmy for Best Actress, awarded in 1950.
Behind the stereotype of the Jewish mother, Berg was a canny and progressive Park Avenue feminist who created a multimedia empire. Goldberg merchandising extended to comic strips, advice columns, and in probably the earliest example of a celebrity clothing line, Goldberg-inspired housedress patterns. In a vaudeville tour one summer, Berg grossed $10,000 a week. As Molly, Berg advocated for war bonds and took on some social causes: a rock is thrown through the Goldberg’s window in one episode, a reference to Kristallnacht, and to the Goldberg family’s worries about Jewish relatives in Europe during World War II.
The TV show’s eventual cancellation came about not because of anti-Semitism, but ironically enough, because of its own success. Philip Loeb, the actor who played Jake Goldberg, Molly’s husband, was blacklisted for suspected Communist activities and the show’s sponsor pulled out. Berg fought for a year-and-a-half while the show was off the air, to save Loeb’s job, even attempting to intercede with J. Edgar Hoover. Eventually, she gave up and Loeb was replaced by a series of actors. However in Goldberg’s 18 month absence from television, another matriarch, Lucille Ball, had arrived, and the rest is history. “The Goldberg’s” limped along for a few years but in 1955 Berg called it quits. She went on to star on Broadway, winning a Tony award; she wrote a bestselling book; and passed away in 1966.
If there is any possible criticism of this enjoyable documentary it’s that Kempner perhaps goes a bit far in making Goldberg’s case. Goldberg, important as she was, didn’t pull America out of the Depression. And despite her progressive-for-her-time outlook, Berg was no revolutionary. As she once put it: “Anything that will bother people ... unions, fund raising, Zionism, socialism, intergroup relations. ... I keep things average. I don’t want to lose friends.”
But so what? On some level, Molly Goldberg made it okay to be Jewish in America.