November 25, 2009 -- Like most people, I'd never heard of Gertrude Berg and the radio and TV sitcom she wrote, directed, produced and starred in, The Goldbergs. It is a remarkable story, all the more remarkable for the era in which it happened, an era when most women had almost no opportunities to become famous, rich and powerful. Gertrude Berg not only triumphed during this time, she was the Oprah Winfrey of this era, a giant in radio and television, and also a successful Broadway performer. This is the subject of the documentary film “Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg.”

Born Tilly Edelstein in 1898, she married Lewis Berg in 1918 (two years before women achieved the right to vote in the US) and later had two children. She had always wanted to be an actress. She learned to write plays as a child at her father's Catskills Mountains resort in Fleischmanns, NY. Despite the opposition of her father, she wrote, directed and starred in her first radio show on November 20, 1929 on the NBC network. The 15-minute episodes of The Rise of the Goldbergs, a Jewish family living in New York City tenements became a huge national hit. Berg (who played Molly Goldberg, the family matriarch) and the other cast members received reams of fan mail. The network switchboard was swamped and over 100,000 contacted the studio when Berg was forced to miss some shows due to illness. The CBS network hired Berg away from NBC in one of the first cases of broadcast talent raiding. The show continued successfully for nearly 20 years.

When television came along, Berg saw a chance for her show to be reborn in a new medium. She approached CBS with an idea for a comedy based on her Broadway play “Me and Molly.” Incredibly, CBS refused to allow Berg an audition. She approached the head of CBS, the legendary William S. Paley and admonished him for CBS treating her in such a way “after all I have done for you.” She finally persuaded him to allow her an audition. CBS executives liked what they saw, and “The Goldbergs” became the first successful situation comedy, or sitcom, on TV, first airing in 1949. Berg won the first Emmy award for a lead actress in a comedy series in 1950. Later, she won a Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance in the Broadway play A Majority of One. She even starred in a movie based on her TV series.

The film does a pretty good job of following Berg's life, although it does abruptly skip ahead a number of years from time to time without the use of narration to span the gap of years. Particular mention is made of the anti-Semitism Berg had to deal with, particularly during the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and the American Nazi German-American Bund. Hate-spewing right-wing radio lecturer Father Coughlin is also shown, looking very Hitler-like. Berg countered with a warm-hearted depiction of a Jewish family, including an actual Jewish religious service on her show. The film also delves into the damage done to the show by the Red scare of the 1950s. The show's co-star Philip Loeb, who played Molly's husband, Jake Goldberg, was one of the performers named in “Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television.” He was blacklisted. Berg refused to fire him, even when sponsors abandoned the show. She tried to find another sponsor, but none would cooperate. Loeb agreed to a buyout to leave the show and later committed suicide in 1955. According to the film, Zero Mostel's (he was also blacklisted) suicide scene in Woody Allen's film “The Front” was loosely based on Loeb's suicide. According to the film, Berg lost her prime time slot to the “I Love Lucy” show while she was fighting the blacklisting of Loeb. Gradually, her star faded.

The film goes on to follow Berg's career and life to the end, in 1966. It covers the highlights, but there are some gaps. It also doesn't really explain the source of the incredible drive it took for Berg to fight her way to the top of the entertainment business against steep odds, and to write some 12,000 radio and screenplays. The film does advance a theory that Berg was working hard to fulfill the unfulfilled dreams of her father, who was never very successful, but that doesn't seem likely since he always opposed her career. There are some good interviews in the film with interesting people like Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, actor Ed Asner, Public Radio's “All Things Considered” anchor Susan Stamberg, famed TV producer and educator Norman Lear and various people who acted on “The Goldbergs” show and friends and relatives of Berg. None are more memorable or heartfelt than the words of former Goldbergs actress Anna Berger, talking about how Philip Loeb was hounded to death by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and his ilk. She said, “The most shameful period in American History, a blight on America. Friends against friends, finger pointing, accusations, Red Channels ... Some went to Europe. Some went to Mexico and some, Philip, my darling Philip, committed suicide.”

People like Philip Loeb and Gertrude Berg are worth remembering, along with Senator Joseph McCarthy and Nazi sympathizers like Father Coughlin. People like them are around right now, and they are in positions of power, too. That is another reason these people should not be forgotten. People can do a lot of good with fame, money and power, and some can do an incredible amount of damage. This film rates a B.

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Copyright © 2009 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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