Gertrude Berg
Personal Information
Born: 1899
Died: 1966
Country of Birth: USA
Nationality: USA
Ethnicity: White
Education
1916-1918 took extension classes in playwriting at Columbia University
""My sense of Jewishness comes not from my father and mother so much as from my grandparents," she explained. "We scarcely spoke Yiddish at home. You'll notice there's no dialect, just intonation and word order." (nytimes.com); "I'd write a script and then sometimes we'd all get together and rewrite it in the studio just before going on the air,” she said. "If we needed street noises, I'd have them put a microphone on the window sill and it would pick up the sounds of the cars below on Madison Avenue. It was fun because we did it ourselves. Now all the fun has gone out of it. It's a business." (nytimes.com); "
— Gertrude Berg
Professional Life
Field of Study: Screenwriter, actress, producer
Institution/Corporation: None found
Degrees & Memberships: None found
Awards & Achievements
Awards: 1959 Best Leading Actress, Tony Awards; 1951 Best Leading Actress, Emmy Awards; 1961 Sarah Siddons Award; Quaker City Humanitarian Award; Veterans of Foreign Wars Citation; Girls Club of American Motherhood Medal; Certificate of Merit, US Treasury Department
Achievements: one of the first women to create, write, produce, and star in a long-running hit when she premiered her radio serial comedy-drama The Rise of the Goldbergs (1929); the name of the show was later changed to The Goldbergs; published a best-selling memoir, Molly and Me, in 1961; "The Goldbergs" was one of the first programs to eschew sound "effects" in favor of the real thing, like running water and frying bacon; wrote The Molly Goldberg Cookbook (1955); is considered by some to be the Mother of the Sitcom;
born Tillie (or Tilly) Edelstein
wrote the scripts for her NBC show in pencil for the entire run of the series
her husband refused to be photographed with his wife for publicity purposes, as he felt this was infringing on her success
she wrote nearly all of the radio episodes (more than 5,000) plus a Broadway adaptation, Me and Molly (1948)
the scripts from the first season of the radio show were later published in book form
CBS brought "The Goldbergs" to TV in 1949 & it has become known as the 1st TV sitcom
1950 her co-star Philip Loeb was blacklisted by the McCarthy hearings & sponsors wanted him fired but she refused; in June 1951 the sponsors of the program withdrew due to pressure from HUAC & the show was dropped by CBS but eventually picked up by NBC; Loeb resigned in 1952 because he didn't want to cause any more trouble for Berg (he committed suicide 3-4 years later) : the show went off the air in 1954
Wrote an advice column "Mama Talks"
had a radio show from 1929 until it went to TV in 1949
husband Lewis (a chemist by training) was on the team during World War I that invented instant coffee for use by US troops
her 1st radio show ran for 1 episode in 192 and was called "Effie & Laura" it was about two clerks in a dime store (cancelled because the character Laura remarked "marriages are never made in heaven")^was terrified of flying & traveled by train or boat
you can listen to a lot of the shows for free online, courtesy of the UCLA Film & TV Archive or The Jewish Television Network