|
|
|
Movie Review
| Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. Dir. and prod. by Aviva Kempner. Ciesla Foundation, 2009. 92 mins. (http://www.mollygoldbergfilm.org)
|
| Anyone interested in the history of American media, the ongoing saga of Jewish life in the United States, and the layered role ethnicity plays in American culture should be grateful to Aviva Kempner. As the director of the widely acclaimed documentary, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (1998), she resurrected a major Jewish sports figure—the Hall of Fame baseball player considered among the best in the game. With Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, Kempner has brought back to life another crucial figure in American Jewish history: Gertrude Berg (1898–1966). Affected by the vagaries that drive reputations up and down in the historical marketplace, Gertrude Berg's stock has dipped close to the point of disappearing from the view of scholars and general audiences. Now and then an article or a book chapter has appeared to discuss her role and importance, but Berg's myriad accomplishments have been seemingly muffled by time. Her fate seemed a sad—even cruel—reward for one of the great pioneers of radio and television, and one of the most significant figures in American Jewish popular culture. |
1
|
|
Kempner's film chronicles Berg's life and career. Born in Harlem, New York, as Tillie Edelstein, Berg became a modern and sophisticated lady, yet she assumed the persona of a woman whose fractured English phrases delighted radio and television audiences for decades. Her fifteen-minute radio show, The Rise of the Goldbergs (later shortened to The Goldbergs) debuted with the nbc Radio Network on November 20, 1929, and ran for seventeen years. She modeled her fictional characters—Jake, Sammy, and Rosily—on her own husband (Lewis), her son (Cherney), and her daughter (Harriet). To her fictional family she added kindly Uncle David, a loveable figure based on her grandfather. Berg wrote the vast majority of the radio episodes herself—an astounding artistic feat that eventually totaled over five thousand scripts. In addition, she penned a successful Broadway adaptation of her radio show. With many of the original radio cast members, Me and Molly opened in 1948 at the Belasco Theater and ran for 150 performances. One year later, Berg convinced CBS to air a television program based on the radio show. She was as successful in television as she had been in radio, winning an Emmy Award (as lead actress in a comedy series) in 1950. Her show remained in production for five more years, but not continuously and not without controversy. |
2
|
|
In 1951 Philip Loeb (Jake Goldberg in The Goldbergs) was listed in the right-wing pamphlet Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television as one of over 150 purported "reds" in the media industry. Much to her credit, Berg refused to fire Loeb because of the accusations; nevertheless, to save the series Loeb ultimately resigned his role. Even so, General Foods would no longer sponsor the show—no alternative sponsor could be found—and The Goldbergs went off the air until 1953. The show that supplanted The Goldbergs during its hiatus was the far less ethnic I Love Lucy. When The Goldbergs returned with a new actor in the role of Jake (initially Harold J. Stone and later Robert H. Harris) the show attempted to replicate the changing demographics of Cold War America. Eventually, the show even changed its location from the immigrant neighborhood of the Bronx—a natural setting for Molly and her family—to the placid New York suburb of Haverville—a far less conducive milieu for the show's trademark ethnic humor. In 1955, after a brief time in syndication, The Goldbergs was cancelled permanently. That same year, a despondent Loeb committed suicide. At a 2009 screening of Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg at the Palace Theater in Washington, D.C., Kempner justified the extensive screen time devoted to the Loeb case by saying that the story was emblematic of a terrible period in American history when dissent was punished as disloyalty. That reasoning is true enough, but the film loses its way in a thicket of historical recitation that slows the movie's pace and seems overly pedantic. |
. . . |
There are about 841 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
