Zoneboy
10-08-2009, 06:30 PM
Oct. 6--Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "I wasn't the one who got us out of the Depression. It was Molly Goldberg."
Just in time, here she comes again.
The wonderfully entertaining documentary "Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg" chronicles the life and times of pioneering TV actress Gertrude Berg. Since 1929 on radio, and from 1949 to 1955 on TV, she was the embodiment of the down-to-earth Jewish mother of an immigrant family in the Bronx borough of New York City. It debuted on radio two months after the stock market crash with Molly opening the show by gossiping with her neighbors, who yelled, "Yoo hoo, Mrs. Goldberg!" out the window of the tenement apartment across the alley.
The family was made up of Molly, Jake, Rosalie, Sammy and Uncle David, with the rent at $78 a month.
Berg, a savvy businesswoman, not only played the lead but wrote some 12,000 scripts, hired and fired the actors and cooked the meals seen on the show. Debuting on radio two months after the stock market crash, she reminded America that everything was going to be OK and that we all could get by on very little.
She literally invented the situation comedy as a television genre -- leading directly to "I Love Lucy," "All in the Family" and all the rest. Her window became the urban equivalent to the backyard fence across America.
Although she taught America about Jewish immigrants, the viewers came to think of the Goldbergs as any American family.
At the stage door of a Broadway theater in 1960, I saw Berg emerge to the cheers of throngs of well-wishers. The biggest rock star today would hardly surpass such attention. The TV show "The Goldbergs" had been off the air for years. She was starring in a play called "A Majority of One" as a Jewish widow opposite Sir Cedric Hardwicke as a Japanese businessman with whom she becomes romantically involved, despite her hatred of the Japanese in World War II. (When it was made into a movie, Rosalind Russell played the part).
In 2009, even more people have lost track of Gertrude Berg's place in American entertainment history. The documentary, written and directed by Aviva Kempner, will do much to correct that. Kempner has a knack for taking a life and making it a microcosm of its time. She did this brilliantly with "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg" in the world of baseball. She does it again here.
Born Gertrude Edelstein in New York City in 1899, the woman who was to become Molly Goldberg had a father who insisted she help him manage hotels in the Catskills and Florida. She wanted to be an actress. It didn't hurt that her husband became a millionaire via his instant-coffee business. (The film errs, however, in claiming he invented instant coffee.)
Her radio show, and subsequent TV incarnation, was totally her own creation. She wrote the radio show that ran 15 minutes Mondays through Fridays and then the weekly, 30-minute TV show. She got up at 6 a.m. to write the day's script, often at a New York library where she was eventually thrown out because she acted out the parts as she wrote them. She planned to hire another actress to play Molly, but thousands of letters poured in when it was announced. She had a hit, and she was the star.
Although she was folksy and plain on the show, Berg liked to shop at major department stores in real life. She became the Oprah of her time as her empire expanded to a daily newspaper column, jigsaw puzzles and other merchandise. Actors like Steve McQueen and Anne Bancroft broke through with small parts on her show.
She was off the air for more than a year, and "I Love Lucy" took her time slot, but she eventually came back.
Disaster hit when Philip Loeb, the actor who played her TV husband, was blacklisted from film and TV during the 1950s Red Scare hysteria. When she stuck by him, believing he was unjustly accused, she also was listed as a "Red sympathizer." The 1976 movie "The Front," starring Woody Allen, included a character based on Loeb.
When she returned to the air with a newly cast husband, the public failed to adjust. Further trouble came when the network insisted the Goldbergs follow the trend in America and move from the Bronx to the suburbs. It was never the same.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is among those who explain what this show meant to them during their growing-up years. Others include Norman Lear and, more cynically, Edward Asner.
Gertrude Berg changed the way America thought as well as the way it looked at television.
When Molly Goldberg was told her family would someday be eating off gold plates, she replied: "Very nice -- but will it taste any better?"
http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/136135297
Just in time, here she comes again.
The wonderfully entertaining documentary "Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg" chronicles the life and times of pioneering TV actress Gertrude Berg. Since 1929 on radio, and from 1949 to 1955 on TV, she was the embodiment of the down-to-earth Jewish mother of an immigrant family in the Bronx borough of New York City. It debuted on radio two months after the stock market crash with Molly opening the show by gossiping with her neighbors, who yelled, "Yoo hoo, Mrs. Goldberg!" out the window of the tenement apartment across the alley.
The family was made up of Molly, Jake, Rosalie, Sammy and Uncle David, with the rent at $78 a month.
Berg, a savvy businesswoman, not only played the lead but wrote some 12,000 scripts, hired and fired the actors and cooked the meals seen on the show. Debuting on radio two months after the stock market crash, she reminded America that everything was going to be OK and that we all could get by on very little.
She literally invented the situation comedy as a television genre -- leading directly to "I Love Lucy," "All in the Family" and all the rest. Her window became the urban equivalent to the backyard fence across America.
Although she taught America about Jewish immigrants, the viewers came to think of the Goldbergs as any American family.
At the stage door of a Broadway theater in 1960, I saw Berg emerge to the cheers of throngs of well-wishers. The biggest rock star today would hardly surpass such attention. The TV show "The Goldbergs" had been off the air for years. She was starring in a play called "A Majority of One" as a Jewish widow opposite Sir Cedric Hardwicke as a Japanese businessman with whom she becomes romantically involved, despite her hatred of the Japanese in World War II. (When it was made into a movie, Rosalind Russell played the part).
In 2009, even more people have lost track of Gertrude Berg's place in American entertainment history. The documentary, written and directed by Aviva Kempner, will do much to correct that. Kempner has a knack for taking a life and making it a microcosm of its time. She did this brilliantly with "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg" in the world of baseball. She does it again here.
Born Gertrude Edelstein in New York City in 1899, the woman who was to become Molly Goldberg had a father who insisted she help him manage hotels in the Catskills and Florida. She wanted to be an actress. It didn't hurt that her husband became a millionaire via his instant-coffee business. (The film errs, however, in claiming he invented instant coffee.)
Her radio show, and subsequent TV incarnation, was totally her own creation. She wrote the radio show that ran 15 minutes Mondays through Fridays and then the weekly, 30-minute TV show. She got up at 6 a.m. to write the day's script, often at a New York library where she was eventually thrown out because she acted out the parts as she wrote them. She planned to hire another actress to play Molly, but thousands of letters poured in when it was announced. She had a hit, and she was the star.
Although she was folksy and plain on the show, Berg liked to shop at major department stores in real life. She became the Oprah of her time as her empire expanded to a daily newspaper column, jigsaw puzzles and other merchandise. Actors like Steve McQueen and Anne Bancroft broke through with small parts on her show.
She was off the air for more than a year, and "I Love Lucy" took her time slot, but she eventually came back.
Disaster hit when Philip Loeb, the actor who played her TV husband, was blacklisted from film and TV during the 1950s Red Scare hysteria. When she stuck by him, believing he was unjustly accused, she also was listed as a "Red sympathizer." The 1976 movie "The Front," starring Woody Allen, included a character based on Loeb.
When she returned to the air with a newly cast husband, the public failed to adjust. Further trouble came when the network insisted the Goldbergs follow the trend in America and move from the Bronx to the suburbs. It was never the same.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is among those who explain what this show meant to them during their growing-up years. Others include Norman Lear and, more cynically, Edward Asner.
Gertrude Berg changed the way America thought as well as the way it looked at television.
When Molly Goldberg was told her family would someday be eating off gold plates, she replied: "Very nice -- but will it taste any better?"
http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/136135297