Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg: Soothing as Matzah Ball Soup
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Trailer for Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Before I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, Seinfeld, and the Cosby Show, there was The Goldbergs starring Gertrude Berg, who received the first Best Actress Emmy in history, paving the way for women in the entertainment industry. Further, Berg was a trailblazer with popular audio and television shows, a cookbook, jigsaw puzzles, advice column and a clothing line for modern women of her time. 60 years before Oprah.
Award-winning filmmaker Aviva Kempner (Today I Vote for My Joey, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg) spoke to The Jewish Week about her latest documentary on TV icon Gertrude Berg, Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg:
Gertrude Berg was never given credit for developing the domestic sitcom. If you look at ‘Lucy,’ ‘The Honeymooners,’ ‘Seinfeld,’ ‘Friends’ — it’s all about neighbors walking into each other’s homes. Gertrude was the prototype.
The sense of shared humanity that she brought into living rooms across America was as soothing as matzah ball soup.
The Goldbergs was based on the popular radio show The Rise of the Goldbergs, a series about a Jewish family living in the Bronx with “one foot in the old world and one in the new.” The Museum of Broadcast Communications writes:
In many ways the program that Gertrude Berg devised in 1928 and sold to NBC radio the following year was unique. No other daily serial drama reflected so explicitly its creator’s own ethnic background, and few other producers retained such close control over their work. Until the late 1930s, Berg herself wrote all the scripts, five to six fifteen-minute stories per week…
Prior to the film’s July opening at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, we are offering a preview of Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg on Jun 25 at 92Y as part of our long-running Reel Pieces series, where moderator Annette Insdorf will interview director Aviva Kempner.
