The Goldbergs

I am 59 and was searching my ancient memory for the first few TV shows I saw as a boy. We got our first TV in 1948. "Molly Goldberg," not among my favorites, was incomprehensible to me. The Jewish humor escaped me as a little boy. Still, that show stuck in my memory. For better or worse, I would really like to see some of those old TV shows from the first half of the last century.

As a young child living in a brownstone walk-up apartment in a predominantly Jewish section of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood watching this show with my Mom & Dad I didn't realize how cool it was that there was a show about people like us. The Goldbergs were a proud Jewish family. Since that time we've had ambiguously Jewish characters such as the Kravitz couple on Bewitched and Felix & Oscar on The Odd Couple BUT the Goldbergs were indeed the real deal.

In today's TV world, it seems as if they go for the straight, unsubtle, some times dirty laughs. Shows like this would simply not be given a chance. Call "the Goldbergs" what you will, it is a gentle and thoughtful comedy. Where I grew up there were many, many people similar to those presented in this show, including my own Grandmother. We also lived near plenty Ralph and Alice Cramden's, and even couples similar to the Mertz's. Slide of life programs really were reflective of life, at least my life. The Goldberg's is a wonderful show in this vein. BTW I've found episodes on Internet Archives as well as YouTube. Enjoy.

First airing and adapted for television in 1949 and based on its earlier radio broadcast starting in 1929, we have The Goldbergs. Often sited as one of the first sitcoms for both radio and television, it certainly helped define the format as watchers and listeners tuned in each week to hear the latest happenings of the Goldberg family, particularly the matriarch Molly. Created, written, and directed entirely by the star herself, Gertrude Berg, the series was certainly the first series with a female showrunner, and was also the first to depict home life of a Jewish family. Only hearing of the series after reading (listening) to Jennifer Keishin Armstrong's book When Women Invented Television, which I would highly recommend for more on this series, Berg herself, and a few other early women greats in the business, I immediately sought out where I could stream it and was lucky to find many of the extant episodes available on RokuTV. Unfortunately much of the series has been lost to time, but a considerable amount still exists. I must stay to a modern audience the pace is quite slow, and the constant advertisements for Rybutol, a vitamin supplement, were both funny and a fun reminder about how little advertising has changed in over 75 years. Episodes typically follow one or two new family dilemmas, from meeting the new neighbours to one of the kid's new relationships. With no laugh tracks, at the insistence of Berg, the series remains quite lighthearted, for me more a source of chuckles than laughs, but still quite good. Known for her leaning out their apartment window and delivering monologues, ad reads, and chatting with the neighbours, her famous "yoo-hoo" greeting would have been meet by thousands each week tuning into the latest 30 minute episode. To note, there is a more modern series of the same name and similar premise, but interestingly they are completely unrelated, the modern supposedly written without knowledge of the original. All said, unless you're already a fan of slower, black and white, 1950's television I don't know that I'd necessarily recommend, but if that does happen to be you certainly go for it, its a cornerstone of what's made tv today and was fun to have on in the background.

In the early days of television there was a lot of free program timing and what to do to fill it. Simply take the best from medium you are supplanting, radio. The first years of television simply had radio shows be it Jack Benny, Burns&Allen, the Lone Ranger, etc. simply come over from radio and before when you only could imagine what the characters looked like, now they had to fulfill expectations of what you came to expect.

The Goldbergs were filmed live originally, no canned laugh soundtrack, the laughs Gertrude Berg and her cast got were real. But Gertrude Berg was no stranger to live audiences, she honed her acting talent and the material that she and her husband Lewis wrote at the Borscht Belt Jewish club in the Catskills. From the skits of Jewish life she wrote for her club act, Ms. Berg created the adventures of the lovable and philosophical Molly Goldberg and her family which consisted of husband Jake, Philip Loeb, children Arlene McQuade and Larry Robinson and Uncle David played by Eli Mintz. They and others who replaced them among the older generation were all veterans of the Yiddish Theater and the Borscht Belt nightclubs of the Catskills.

Though many folks succeeded the other cast members, particularly Philip Loeb who was blacklisted, only Gertrude Berg was with it all the way. As the creative force of the show, it could not have worked with anyone else. It'a also the only television show I can think of besides Car 54 Where Are You that was centered in the Bronx.

The Jewish Champs Elysees of the time, better known as the Grand Concourse has changed considerably over half a century. Molly Goldberg wouldn't recognize the place now. From where she dispensed her wisdom from out her apartment window or in the living room, she'd more than likely have to do it in Spanish today.

Yet take out the Jewish character and humor, what you've got with The Goldbergs are the bare bones of a gazillion family comedies that have come through television since then. Family situations are universal and is George Lopez's Show speaking of Molly dispensing wisdom in Spanish all that different from The Goldbergs.

Gertrude Berg was a real pioneer in nightclub, on radio, and finally on television. Molly, you were a Yiddishe sage.