Gertrude Berg

Infobox actor
name = Gertrude Berg
imagesize =
caption =
birthname = Gertrude Edelstein
birthdate = birth date|1899|10|3
birthplace = New York City, New York, USA
deathdate = Death date and age|1966|9|14|1899|10|3
deathplace = New York City, New York, USA
occupation = Film, radio, television actress, screenwriter
yearsactive =
spouse = Lewis Berg
emmyawards = Outstanding Lead Actress - Comedy Series
1950 The Goldbergs
tonyawards = Best Leading Actress in a Play
1959 "A Majority of One"

Gertrude Berg (October 3, 1899 - September 14, 1966), was an American pioneer of classic radio, one of the first if not the first woman to create, write, produce and star in a long-running hit when she premiered the serial comedy-drama "The Rise of the Goldbergs" (1929), later known as "The Goldbergs".

Berg was born Gertrude Edelstein in Harlem, New York City. She later attended public schools and then Columbia University. There, she met Lewis Berg, whom she married in 1918. She learned theater in college while producing skits at her father's Catskills Mountains resort. She later developed one of those skits, a semi-autobiographical portrait of a Jewish family in the New York tenements, into the 15-minute series. On November 20, 1929, "The Rise of the Goldbergs" was first broadcast on the NBC radio network. She started at US$75 a week. Less than two years later, she let the sponsor propose a salary and was told that "Mrs. Berg, we can't pay a cent over US$2,000 a week." [ Current Biography 1941, p71 ]

Americans of all stripes identified with the situations in "The Goldbergs" even if they weren't urban lower-middle-class Jews trying to assimilate into the new world. The show's characters received fan mail as often as the actors who played them did, and thousands of letters poured into the show's network when Berg herself was forced to miss time on the air due to illness.

Berg became inextricably identified as Molly Goldberg, the bighearted matriarch of her fictitious New York family who moved to Connecticut as symbolic of Jewish-American upward mobility. She wrote practically all the show's radio episodes (more than 5000) plus a Broadway adaptation, "Me and Molly" (1948). It took considerable convincing, but Berg finally prevailed upon CBS to let her bring "The Goldbergs" to television in 1949, where it stayed in production for five years. Berg won an Emmy award as Molly in 1949.

On television, "The Goldbergs" ran into trouble in 1951, when co-star Philip Loeb (as patriarch Jake Goldberg) was one of the performers named in "Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television" and blacklisted as a result. A strongly loyal person, Berg refused to fire Loeb. But Loeb was a strongly loyal man in his own right, loyal enough to Berg that he resigned rather than cause her trouble, and he reportedly received a generous severance from the show. It wasn't enough, however, to prevent Loeb from sinking into the depression that ultimately drove him to suicide.

"The Goldbergs" returned a year after Loeb departed the show and continued until 1954, during which time Berg also wrote a film version of the show. The show remained in syndicated reruns for another few years, after one year of production under the title "Molly".

In 1959, Berg won the Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance in "A Majority of One". In 1961 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre. Berg also published a best-selling memoir, "Molly and Me", in 1961 and made one last stab at TV success in the situation comedy "Mrs G. Goes To College" (retitled "The Gertrude Berg Show" in the middle of its one season on CBS in 1961-62), before she died of heart failure during routine tests in a New York hospital in 1966. A creative and energetic woman, Berg was also a songwriter. Her composition
That Wonderful Someone even found its way into the repertoire of countrymusic superstar Patsy Cline. Berg was among the earliest examples that women in broadcasting and on the stage could transcend acting and exert their versatility behind the scenes as well.

References

* [http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/b/berg_g.htm Syracuse University: Gertrude Berg Papers]

External links

*imdb|0073764
*ibdb|5896
*amg name|2:5579
* [http://www.shemadeit.org/meet/summary.aspx?m=16 Gertrude Berg] Honoree at The Paley Center for Media
* [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3979341504627616075 Interview with Fred Rogers] Gertrude Berg on the PBS show "Children's Corner", Archive of American Television interview with Fred Rogers, part 4 of 9, about ten minutes into the program.
* [http://www.mollygoldbergfilm.org "Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Goldberg"] Documentary currently in production.
* [http://www.shemadeit.org/watch/default.aspx?page=2 Webcast on Gertrude Berg] , The Paley Center for Media, "From The Goldbergs to 2005: The Evolution of the Family Sitcom" (November 16, 2005)

Awards