Was this a drama or a comedy?

It's a comedy. Every sitcom book I ever read lists it as one. I don't think it had a laughtrack though.

Yes books and websites identify "The Goldbergs" as a sitcom. But you have to remember this show was produced in the late 40's and early 50's when TV was in its infancy so there was no set rules for what was a comedy and what was a drama. So lines tended to be crossed a lot in those early days.

Yes books and websites identify "The Goldbergs" as a sitcom. But you have to remember this show was produced in the late 40's and early 50's when TV was in its infancy so there was no set rules for what was a comedy and what was a drama. So lines tended to be crossed a lot in those early days.
Yea that is true. Also there were quite a few sitcoms in the early days that didn't have a laugh track. I think Mama was another one of these. I saw an episode of The Aldrich Family over on youtube and that one didn't either.

This show has no laugh track, that was why I was curious if it was a comedy or a drama. It kinda has a soap opera feel to it to me.

I saw this show for the first time on a jewish network station. Got a kick of commercial Molly did for remitol.? a geritol type tonic. Thought the show was pretty good.

This show has no laugh track, that was why I was curious if it was a comedy or a drama. It kinda has a soap opera feel to it to me.

I might be long ( and wrong), but I think Desi Arnaz invented the laugh track, or at least made it popular. Sitcoms in this era still use his laugh track.

...the series was essentially a drama, with some comedy dialogue. It was NEVER staged before a live audience. It started out as a nightly quarter-hour serial over NBC radio in 1929, eventually moving into daytime [with Procter & Gamble as its sponsor]. That version was mostly a "soap opera", with dramatic twists and turns permeating every episode, lasting through 1945. In 1949, the show was revived as a weekly half-hour radio series on CBS...as what we now call a "dramedy". It also appeared on TV the following fall, with both radio and TV versions produced through 1950. When Gertrude Berg produced the filmed syndicated version of the series in 1955-'56, she insisted on not having a live audience in attendance...and NO "laugh tracks".

Second, Desi Arnaz did not invent the "laugh track": he pioneered the use of a live audience present during a filmed TV series ["TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES" was the first network filmed series to use multiple cameras and a live audience, in its 1950-'51 season; its production supervisor, Al Simon, went to work for Desi the following year on "I LOVE LUCY"]. The credit for pioneering the use of a laugh track on a filmed TV show belongs to producer Jerry Fairbanks; he began using one as early as 1949, when he produced an unaired and unsold pilot, "A DAY IN THE LIFE OF DENNIS DAY" (an attempt to adapt Dennis' radio show for television); he also pioneered the use of multiple cameras in filming TV shows {his process was called "MultiCam"}, initially using it on a regular basis when he filmed several episodes of CBS' "THE SILVER THEATER" (1949-'50).

The product that sponsored "THE GOLDBERGS" in 1953 and '54 (on NBC, then DuMont) was "Rybutol", a product of the now-defunct Vitamin Corporation of America.

:tv:

Was this a drama or a comedy?

For those of you that want to see this, you can go to:

The Goldbergs (http://www.droopyvids.com/category.php?cat=TheGoldbergs)

I found 26 episodes.