1931 book by Gertrude Berg with an introduction by Eddie Cantor

The Goldbergs was a comedy-drama broadcast from 1929 to 1946 on American radio and later seen as a television situation comedy (1949-56). Image File history File links Riseof. ... Image File history File links Riseof. ... Eddie Cantor in the 1920s Eddie Cantor (January 31, 1892 - October 10, 1964) was a comedian, singer, actor, songwriter, and one of the most popular entertainers in the United States of America in the early and middle 20th century. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

"Yoo-hoo! Is anybody?"

The program was devised by writer-actress Gertrude Berg in 1928 and sold to the NBC radio network the following year. It was a domestic comedy featuring the home life of a Jewish family in New York City. In addition to writing the scripts and directing each episode, Berg starred as bighearted, lovingly meddlesome matriarch Molly Goldberg. The show began as a portrait of Jewish tenement life before later evoking such growing pains as moving into a more suburban setting and struggling with assimilation while sustaining their roots. Gertrude Berg (born October 3, 1899; died September 14, 1966) was a star of old-time radio and television. ... NBC (an abbreviation for National Broadcasting Company, its former corporate name) is an American television network headquartered in the GE Building in New York Citys Rockefeller Center. ... Comedy has a classical meaning (comical theatre) and a popular one (the use of humour with an intent to provoke laughter in general). ... For other uses, see Jew (disambiguation). ... Nickname: Big Apple, Gotham, NYC, City That Never Sleeps, The Concrete Jungle, The City So Nice They Named It Twice Location in the state of New York Coordinates: Country United States State New York Boroughs The Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens Staten Island Settled 1676  - Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Area    - City...

The Goldbergs began as a weekly 15-minute program called The Rise of the Goldbergs on November 20, 1929, going daily in 1931. The series moved to CBS in 1936 with the title shortened to The Goldbergs. Like other 15-minute comedies of the day, such as Amos 'n' Andy, Lum and Abner, Easy Aces, Vic and Sade and Myrt and Marge, The Goldbergs was a serial offering with running storylines. And Berg's usual introduction---in character as Molly, hollering, "Yoo-hoo! Is anybody?"---became an instant catch phrase. In the 1940s it was followed by future TV game host Bud Collyer warbling, "There she is, folks--that's Molly Goldberg, a woman with a place in every heart and a finger in every pie." November 20 is the 324th day of the year (325th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... CBS is one of the largest radio and television networks in the United States. ... Illustrator J.J. Goulds 1930 drawing of Amos and Andy for New Movie Magazine Amos n Andy was a situation comedy popular in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s. ... Lum and Abner was an American radio comedy which was on the air as a first-run network program from 1932 to 1954. ... Goodman and Jane Ace during a 1939 Easy Aces rehearsal. ... Vic and Sade rehearsal: Art Van Harvey, Bernadine Flynn, Paul Rhymer and Bill Idelson Vic and Sade, created and written by Paul Rhymer, had a 14-year run and was the most popular radio series of its kind, reaching 7,000,000 listeners in 1943, according to Time. ... A catch phrase is a phrase or expression that is popularized, usually through repeated use, by a real person or fictional character. ... Bud Collyer on Beat The Clock, 1957 Bud Collyer (b. ...

The show was so popular for many years that fans wrote letters to the show's characters, as well as the performers. When Gertrude Berg missed a couple of weeks due to illness, stations carrying the show were flooded with get-well mail. At the height of the show's popularity, Life wrote: Edward Steichens portrait of Greta Garbo. ...

For millions of Americans, listening to The Goldbergs... has been a happy ritual akin to slipping on a pair of comfortable old shoes that never seem to wear out.

Radio historians Frank Buxton and Bill Owen, in The Big Broadcast 1920-1950, noted that The Goldbergs, which could have been considered a soap opera as much as a comedy, noted that it "differed from most of the other 'soaps' in that its leading characters lived through relatively normal situations. Even though it was the sotry of a poor Jewish family in New York, it had identification for a wide segment of listeners."

Berg seems to have been very much aware of that image and was careful not to allow abrupt changes to the show. Of the 15-minute serial comedies, only Amos 'n' Andy enjoyed a longer radio life than The Goldbergs. She even resisted recasting the role of husband Jake Goldberg after James R. Waters, the actor who played the role on radio, died suddenly in 1945. Berg simply had Molly refer to Jake, occasionally setting up dialogue in which his reply was not heard when she spoke to him.

The serious side

The Goldbergs was also a 1944 comic strip written by Gertrude Berg

Berg was not averse to incoporating serious real-world issues that affected Jewish families. One 1939 episode addressed Kristallnacht and Nazi Germany (including a rock through the family window as the Goldbergs made their Passover Seder); other World War II-era episodes alluded to friends or family members trying to escape the Holocaust. But these were sporadic deviations from the show's main theme of family, neighborhood and the balance between old world values and new world assimilation. Image File history File links Goldbergsstrip. ... Image File history File links Goldbergsstrip. ... Dots represent large cities where synagogues were destroyed. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... Pasch could also refer to the mathematician, Moritz Pasch, and the surname. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Concentration camp inmates during the Holocaust The Holocaust was Nazi Germanys systematic genocide (ethnic cleansing) of various ethnic, religious, national, and secular groups during World War II. Early elements include the Kristallnacht pogrom and the T-4 Euthanasia Program established by Hitler that killed some 200,000 people. ...

The Goldbergs was so popular that performing stars in other arts sought to appear on it. Berg consented, for example, to cast Metropolitan Opera star Jan Peerce almost annually to sing on Yom Kippur and Passover; another famous singer of the day, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, asked Berg directly if she could appear, and Berg wrote her into three episodes. As ethnically-rooted as it was, The Goldbergs had universal appeal during the years of the Great Depression and beyond; their situations were normal enough even with the family's distinctly Jewish absurdism. The Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, seen from Lincoln Center Plaza A full house at the old Metropolitan Opera House, seen from the rear of the stage, at the Metropolitan Opera House for a concert by pianist Józef Hofmann, November 28, 1937. ... Jan Peerce (June 3, 1904 – December 15, 1984) was an American tenor. ... Yom Kippur (IPA: ; Hebrew:יוֹם כִּפּוּר, IPA: ) is the Jewish holiday of the Day of Atonement. ... Pasch could also refer to the mathematician, Moritz Pasch, and the surname. ... The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downturn which started in October of 1929 and lasted through most of the 1930s. ...

The radio cast included Roslyn Silber and Alfred Ryder as children Rosalie and Sammy, Menasha Skulnik as Uncle Davis, Arnold Stang (later famous as the voice of Top Cat) as Seymour Fingerhood, Garson Kanin as Eli Edwards, and Zina Provendie as Sylvia Allison, among others. In 1948, Berg wrote and staged a theatrical version of the show on Broadway, Molly and Me. A year later, she brought The Goldbergs to television. Menasha Skulnik (1882-1970) was one of the stars of New York Citys Yiddish Theatre. ... Arnold Stang (born September 28, 1925 in Chelsea, Massachusetts) is a comic actor who plays a small and bespectacled, yet brash and knowing big-city type. ... Top Cat (also known for several decades as Boss Cat in the United Kingdom) was a Hanna-Barbera prime-time American animated television series which ran from September 27, 1961 to September 26, 1962 for 30 episodes on the ABC network on Wednesdays and continues to be shown on networks... Garson Kanin (November 24, 1912 – March 13, 1999) was an American writer and director of plays and films. ... Broadway theatre[1] is often considered the highest professional form of theatre in the United States. ...

Small screen, big headache

The television version ran on CBS Television from 1949 to 1951 and co-starred Philip Loeb as Jake Goldberg. He and Gertrude Berg reprised their roles in a 1950 film of the same name. The show almost didn't get to the small screen at all: CBS executives were uncertain that the show would work on television as well as it did on radio. Berg prevailed, however, and picked up General Foods as its sponsor. A television program is the content of television broadcasting. ... CBS is one of the largest radio and television networks in the United States. ... Philip Loeb Philip Loeb (March 28, 1892 – September 1, 1955) was an American actor. ... General Foods, formerly shorthand for the General Foods Corporation, is now a brand of Kraft Foods. ...

The Goldbergs was destined to spend almost a decade on television---but not without disruptions. In 1950, Philip Loeb was blacklisted and pressure was placed on Berg (who owned the television version as she had the radio original) to fire him. When she refused, CBS dropped it from their schedule by June 1951. Protestors opposing the jailing of the Hollywood Ten in 1950 (from the 1987 documentary Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist). ...

Eight months later, however NBC---the show's original broadcasting home---picked up the series for the 1952-53 season (with another re-naming, to Molly, in due course), with Harold Stone and then Robert H. Harris replacing Loeb as Jake. The rest of the television cast included Eli Mintz as Uncle David, Tom Taylor as Sammy, Arlene McQuade as Rosalie, Betty Bendyke as Dora Barnett, Susan Steel as Daisy Carey, and Jon Lormer as Henry Carey. On radio, Sammy and Rosalie had grown up and gotten married; on television, the characters were revived as teenagers. NBC (an abbreviation for National Broadcasting Company, its former corporate name) is an American television network headquartered in the GE Building in New York Citys Rockefeller Center. ... Harold Stone Harold Stone (born March 13, 1913 in New York City, New York is an American actor. ...

In 1954, the show moved to the faltering DuMont network for a summer run. The shows were live, but a final version was filmed in 1955, moving the Goldbergs from the Bronx to the New York suburb of Haverville. That same year, Philip Loeb, beset by depression and unable to find other work, committed suicide. The DuMont Television Network was the worlds first commercial television network, beginning operation in the United States in 1946. ...

Aftermath

Gertrude Berg returned to television six years later in a situation comedy, Mrs G. Goes to College, playing Sarah Green, a Molly Goldberg-like character. Despite being retitled The Gertrude Berg Show in mid-year, the program was cancelled after one season. Today, The Goldbergs are available to collectors and fans in a large number of surviving radio episodes and some surviving television episodes. The Ciesla Foundation in Washington, DC is currently working on a documentary about Gertrude Berg's impact on television titled Gertrude Berg: America's Molly Goldberg, directed by Aviva Kempner.

Watch

• Museum of Television & Radio webcast on Gertrude Berg (November 16, 2005))

Listen to

• Free OTR: The Goldbergs (59 episodes)

External links

• Museum of Broadcast Communications: The Goldbergs
• The Remarkable Gertrude Berg: The Goldbergs