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To do this, Kempner is a bit strident in declaring Berg as being the first in everything in radio and television, citing that Berg not only won the first Best Actress Emmy Award but even originated the first radio commercial delivered in Yiddish. Kempner has no trouble declaring the tremendous popularity of the radio and television program The Goldbergs, with Gertrude Berg as the force of nature Molly Goldberg -- 'a woman with a place in every heart and a finger in every pie.' Berg not only starred in the show but wrote, produced, and directed it. Beginning in 1929, The Goldbergs had a fantastic run on radio and television until the inner city Goldbergs headed off to the suburbs in 1955 and the final season tanked.
Kempner makes the case of The Goldbergs as the first situation comedy and there is no denying that The Goldbergs, even if perhaps it was not the first sitcom (an argument could be made that Goodman Ace's Easy Aces should be given that honor), it was certainly the one with the most staying power and the one with the most charismatic performer in the lead role.
Kempner tries not to be completely hagiographic in his profile of Berg, and he nicely diverts the attention away from Berg by highlighting members of The Goldbergs stock company with side tales about Manasha Skolnick and, tragically, with Philip Loeb, whom Berg first defended against his blacklisting but then had to cut loose to save her show. The Loeb incident was the dividing line for The Goldbergs. Forced into hiatus by CBS because of the controversy, when the program later resurfaced it was never the same. Interestingly, the replacement show for The Goldbergs on CBS was I Love Lucy -- another program with a strong female creative force which took the path laid by Berg and ran it to the finish line.
Seminal show that it was, The Goldbergs was perhaps undone by something other than being buried by the I Love Lucy juggernaut. As with many programs in the early 1950s, The Goldbergs was filmed live and the only artifacts of the program are now blurry kinescopes. The innovations of I Love Lucy (and the 39 episodes of The Honeymooners) were more technical than cultural. By shooting the I Love Lucy shows on film, the programs were ripe and ready for reruns and looked great, too. The Goldbergs, like many other pre-videotape television shows, is now only fodder for archivists, its importance tarnished or forgotten as a result. Kempner's achievement in Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg is to remind us all that there is an alternative cultural history that is buried, one that deserves to be uncovered and appreciated once again.
The concierge.
