Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

History is replete with countless stories of exceptional individuals. Unfortunately, when people discuss famous women, African Americans, Hispanics, ,etc. they tend to lean towards those individuals who are better known. Every so often there is the exception, the telling of those not remembered or forgotten, this documentary being one of them. Going into the theater I carried with me only the knowledge of who Getrude Berg was. I came out with a deep appreciation of what she accomplished in her life as a writer of 12,000 scripts; first lady of television, etc. and her overall impact. I was impressed especially at her work on behalf of her costar Phillip Loeb during the Communist witchhunts of the 1950s. This is an exceptional documentary and worth taking the time to see.

When we think of early TV, we usually think of "I Love Lucy". As it turns out, there was a similar show that debuted before that. "The Goldbergs" was an adaptation of a radio show from the '30s, starring Gertrude Berg as the matriarch of a Jewish family. It eventually moved to TV, but ran into trouble when the actor playing the father got blacklisted.

Aviva Kempner's "Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg" looks at Gertrude Berg, her career, and the way that her work reflected life in the United States. Among the interviewees are Norman Lear and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, both of whom were happy to see their ethnic group represented on the radio.

I wouldn't call it the greatest documentary ever, but at the very least, it's my introduction to Gertrude Berg and her work. I hope that I get to see "The Goldbergs" someday.

When is a Jewish mother not a Jewish Mother? When she doesn't act just like Molly Goldberg, the heroine of a popular radio and television comedy, The Goldbergs, in the first half of the 20th century. Aviva Kempner's informative documentary about the life of Gertrude Berg, who played Molly, is more a survey of radio and TV culture at that time than an insightful probe into the life of one of broadcasting's pioneer women.

Kempner's ability to weave in segments from shows, videos, interviews, and archival photographs puts the audience into the creative hotbed of the Depression through the post-WWII '50's. No one, not even Zero Mostel, can steal the stage from the affectionate, strong-willed character and actress (indeed, the two seem the same, so thoroughly did Berg develop Molly from within herself and her life).

Remarkably, Berg also wrote all the shows, a precursor of the all-in-one writer, producer, and actor talents of later generations. Perhaps because of her assimilation into the character of Molly, the film is unable to penetrate the character of the real Gertrude, although I suspect the two sides of Gertrude are just that character. The documentary comments on Berg's sometimes tyrannical off-stage persona, and it does a reasonably good job showing the sacrifices she made to defend her radio and TV husband, Phillip Loeb, from accusations of Red Channels that he was a communist. That conflict and the decision, not hers, to locate the TV show from the Bronx to the suburbs, helped the closing of her career.

It is probable that the notion of the benign, caring Jewish mother, was shaped in part by Gertrude Berg. It is almost certain she was a force behind the TV sitcom paradigm and the emergence of Lucille Ball as the new model of modern TV housewife-comedienne.

Yoo-Hoo is a winning history lesson in broadcasting and women in all media.

Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg is American pop history with a twist. Gertrude Berg was a radio and television pioneer who created a persona, the sort of immigrant Mamma a Greek woman could connect with, though the family of her "Molly Goldberg" character (she wrote and acted the part) was Jewish and came from Eastern Europe. In the bland Fifites "Leave It to Beaver" era, Berg created a counter-image that was urban and ethnic. Documentary filmmaker Kempner made a 1988 film about Hank Greenberg. As she tells it, Gertrude Berg created the sit-com, a field ultimately dominated by Lucille Ball, but only when "Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg" faded due to political pressures. So Jewish ethnicity paved the way for WASP conventionality.

But Gertrude Berg's creation was a pop, bland (and middle-class) creation too, though this generally upbeat documentary doesn't analyze it much, except to point out that the TV show's final version, when the Goldbergs make it financially and resultantly move to the suburbs, lost the show's original spark. We don't get a very clear idea of what episodes of "Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg" were like from the film, except to experience Berg's personal warmth, sweet smile, melodious voice, and ample bosom. The emphasis of clips shown is on gestures and brief interactions rather than plot-lines.

Because it relies on the visuals from old TV shows rather than (perhaps rare?) radio recordings (which may not even exist), it's not much emphasized that Molly Goldberg on radio actually went all the way back to 1929 (Gertrude Berg was born in 1998 and died in 1966). It's claimed that she did the first effective radio advertising, writing her own ads, notably for Sanka coffee. She also sold War Bonds. Her creation throughout its long run boldly provided, in an age of anti-Semitism, a relatively realistic and respectful, if gently comic, version of Jewish New York immigrant life shipped out to be consumed in the American heartland. What effect this had on Middle American thinking is not chronicled, though Ms. Berg's biographer, interestingly, is a young southern WASP type, Glenn D. Smith, who provides much detail of the life. His book is called "Something on My Own": Gertrude Berg and American Broadcasting, 1929-1956. The radio show, also interestingly, was originally called "The Rise of the Goldbergs." What is clear is that out-the-window air-shaft shouted "Yoo hoos" (the way of calling out to people, now old-fashioned) represent the interconnectedness of Brooklyn apartment dwellers in those days who hung out their windows and visited with one another on a day-to-day basis. Molly is always in an apron and always cooking. Yet women in the film remember her as a "feminist" figure because she was strong.

The idyllic state of a Jewish family included in pop mainstream American Fifties (and earlier) culture was to hit a terrible snag when McCarthy ad the Red Baiting era came along. Philip Loeb, who played Mr. Goldberg, was a media union activist involved in multiple liberal causes. He was blacklisted and CBS shut down the show when Gertrude Berg refused to replace him. (She later relented and the series got two other Mr. Goldbergs.) The show had a more than year-long hiatus. Loeb committed suicide, and Zero Mostel (himself a blacklisted artist) played a version of the destroyed Loeb in Martin Ritt's 1976 movie, The Front. Neither Gertrude Berg nor Molly Goldberg was quite the same after this. And as a famous Edward R. Murrow "Person to Person" TV interview stresses, the difference between Molly and Gertrude was hard to draw since the writer/actress spent more hours of the day being Molly than being Gertrude Berg. And her real name was Tillie Edelstein and her family and close friends always called her Tillie. The lovable Jewish earth mother's own mother, depressed from the death of a younger son, was cold and withdrawn: "Molly" was a hopeful fantasy (though late-Fifties TV was rich in some high culture and realism such as Playhouse 90, which gave live presentations of versions of Hemingway and Faulkner, William Saroyan and Clifford Odets).

During the Mrs. Goldberg hiatus time Lucille Ball began "I Love Lucy" and Ball took over the reigning iconic-TV-woman role. When "Mrs. Goldberg" folded Berg triumphed on Broadway in A Majority of One (1959), a comedy about a Jewish widow involved in a romance with a Japanese millionaire. She, director Dore Schary, and co-star Sir Cedric Hardwicke swept the Tony Awards. Berg was devastated when Rosalind Russell was chosen over her for the movie version, and she was reduced to touring plays and summer stock thereafter and ultimately died, the narrator says, of overwork.

This affectionate and nostalgic documentary is full of information but could use more analysis. Some of its talking heads, which include Supreme Court Jutice Ruth Bader Ginzberg, indulge in numbingly vague and euphoric recall. Somehow both the magic and the shortcomings of "Molly Goldberg" and Gertrude Berg don't emerge as clearly as they might.

It is always fun to go back and see the early days of TV. Coming as it did mostly or frequently from radio, this early look at a woman that was as popular as Oprah in her day.

To see a strong woman like Gertrude Berg, who came from a difficult childhood due to the death of her brother and the resulting mental difficulties that beset her mother, develop a character and a family show that everyone in the country followed, was amazing.

To see people like Edward R. Murrow and Ed Sullivan, and the evil red scare that brought about the show's eventual demise is a telling reminder of why Fox News and the Tea Party is so dangerous today.

It was an enjoyable journey into the birth of TV, and the birth of sitcoms.