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You show your age when somebody yells, "Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Goldberg" (or another name) and you smile knowingly.
Your age would be 60 or more, old enough to remember that early TV sitcom, "The Goldbergs" created by and starring the stocky, ever-smiling Gertrude Berg. It first aired in 1949 when only a couple thousand homes around New York City could watch.
- Rating: Not rated, but PG in nature.
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It held on in rocky fashion until 1954 on the fast-disappearing DuMont network, for several years Pittsburgh's only TV source, then one more year in syndication. By then, it had reached a nationwide audience.
Its heart and soul was Berg, a housewife in the 1920s, married to the man who invented instant coffee. She sold a daily radio comedy, "The Rise of the Goldbergs," in 1929 to CBS and it lasted until 1946. Three years later, the network moved it to TV.
In this affectionate documentary, Aviva Kempner ("The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg") reacquaints us with a remarkable force in American culture as well as a dark time when blacklisting and anti-Communist hysteria ruined many lives.
In her gentle, kindly programs, Berg made a Jewish family as all-American as the Andersons on "Father Knows Best." Her malaprop-prone Molly, accent and all, was an unqualified success, earning her the first-ever Emmy for best actress.
But, "The Goldbergs" ran afoul of the growing Red Scare inspired by the baleful Sen. Joseph McCarthy. One victim was Harold Loeb, who played Jake, Molly's husband. Forced out of the show and unable to find work, he was driven to suicide in 1955.
Kempner's film is full of interesting details, not only of Berg's energetic life -- at one point, she was writing and starring in a daily radio show -- but also snapshots of Jewish America, from Hester Street to the Catskills, in the 20th century.
In true documentary fashion, Kempner alternates archival footage with talking heads, including Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a "Goldbergs" fan since childhood. She reveals that, as a lawyer arguing before the court, she was mistakenly called "Mrs. Goldberg" by then Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Several members of Berg's family and actors from the show add a wealth of material, but comments from NPR's all-purpose yakker, Susan Stamberg, are self-referential fluff.
Kempner presents a mostly positive portrait of an indefatigable personality who contributed a richness to a culture that was largely one-dimensional in its WASP nature in those days before we acknowledged our many different faces.
"Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg," opens today at the Manor Theater in Squirrel Hill.
