The Genius that was Gertrude Berg
By Tom Teicholz at 1 February, 2010, 12:55 pm
Yesterday the UCLA Film and Television Archives had a showing of remastered episodes of “The Goldbergs” the Gertrude Berg TV program that Aviva Kempner featured in her recent documentary “Yoohoo Mrs Goldberg” about Berg. A panel about Berg featured writer producer Margaret Nagle, as well as film and TV professor Vincent Brook moderated by journalist Michael Hammond.
Gertrude Berg was one of the most succcessful entertainers of the 1930s, 40s and 50s — During the Depression was the 2nd most well paid woman in America. Her radio program was one of the most successful throughout the 1940s and when TV came around, Berg who over the course of her career wrote, produced and starred in her programs was the first woman to win an Emmy — before Lucy.
So why is she so little remembered today — the most significant is that her programs were not preserved. They were done live and there was no record of them — they never appeared in re-runs.
Much is made of the fact that The Goldbergs were so obviously Jewish and were more ethnic than any sitcom since or would be today — and that no one objected. But as was discussed by Brooks and Nagle — at that time, the earliest days of TV, only 10% of Americans owned TVs and those that did lived in urban settings. Once TV had to appeal to a national large audience, they abandoned programming that focused on a niche. — and we all know that the people in charge of programming decisions at Network have always been visionaries. One could say that were are wrong then, as they are today —
I had never seen “The Goldbergs” until yesterday– and I have to admit — the woman was a genius — a genius in how she put her material across, how she involved the viewers and made them complicit in her program. Also the setting and the camera work — all prefigured the mold — the setting in the home which characters come in and out of — which sitcoms would follow and which many still follow to this day.
UCLA Film archives have released a DVD of Goldberg episodes that is now available. And “Yoohoo Mrs Goldberg” should be available on DVD this summer.
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