The Goldbergs was a situation comedy which ran on American radio from 1929 to 1947, and then on television from 1949 to 1956.
"Yoo-hoo! Is anybody?"
The program was devised by writer-actress Gertrude Berg in 1928 and sold to the NBC radio network the following year. It was a domestic comedy featuring the home life of a Jewish family in New York City; in addition to writing the scripts and directing each episode, Berg starred as bighearted, lovingly meddlesome matriarch Molly Goldberg. The show began as a portrait of Jewish tenement life before later evoking such growing pains as moving into a more suburban setting and struggling with assimilation while sustaining their roots.
The Goldbergs began as a weekly 15-minute program called The Rise of the Goldbergs on November 20, 1929. In 1931, the show became a daily offering; in 1936, it moved to CBS and simplified its name to The Goldbergs. Like other 15-minute comedies of the day such as Amos 'n' Andy, Lum and Abner, Easy Aces, Vic and Sade and Myrt and Marge, The Goldbergs was a serial offering with running storylines. And Berg's usual introduction---in character as Molly, hollering, "Yoo-hoo! Is anybody?"---became an instant catch phrase. In the 1940s it was followed by future television game host Bud Collyer warbling, "There she is, folks--that's Molly Goldberg, a woman with a place in every heart and a finger in every pie."
"Akin to slipping on a pair of comfortable old shoes..."
The show was popular enough for many years that not only did fans write letters to the show's characters, as well as the performers who played them, but when Gertrude Berg herself missed a couple of weeks due to illness stations carrying the show were flooded with get-well mail for her. "For millions of Americans," Life wrote, at the height of the show's popularity, "listening to The Goldbergs . . . has been a happy ritual akin to slipping on a pair of comfortable old shoes that never seem to wear out."
Berg seems to have been very much aware of that image and was extremely careful not to allow abrupt changes to the show during its long radio life. (Only Amos 'n' Andy enjoyed a longer radio life, among the 15-minute serials, than The Goldbergs.) She even resisted recasting the role of husband Jake Goldberg after James R. Waters, the actor who played the role on radio, died suddenly in 1945. Berg simply had Molly refer to Jake, occasionally setting up dialogue involving her addressing him but him not having to reply.
The serious side
But she wasn't averse to addressing serious real-world issues that affected Jewish families. One 1939 episode addressed Kristallnacht and Nazi Germany (including a rock through the family window as the Goldbergs made their Passover Seder); other World War II-era episodes alluded to friends or family members trying to escape the Holocaust. But these were sporadic deviations from the show's main theme of family, neighbourhood, and the balance between old world values and new world assimilation.
The Goldbergs was so popular that performing stars in other arts sought to appear on it. Berg consented, for example, to cast Metropolitan Opera star Jan Peerce almost annually to sing on Yom Kippur and Passover; another famous singer of the day, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, asked Berg directly if she could appear, and Berg wrote her into three episodes. As ethnically-rooted as it was, The Goldbergs had universal appeal during the years of the Great Depression and beyond; their situations were normal enough even with the family's distinctly Jewish absurdism.
Aside from Berg and Waters, the radio cast also included Roslyn Silber and Alfred Ryder as children Rosalie and Sammy, Menasha Skulnik as Uncle Davis, Arnold Stang (later famous as the voice of Top Cat as Seymour Fingerhood, Garson Kanin as Eli Edwards, and Zina Provendie as Sylvia Allison, among others. In 1948, Berg wrote and staged a theatrical version of the show on Broadway, Molly and Me. A year later, she brought The Goldbergs to television.
Small screen, big headache
The television version ran on CBS Television from 1949 to 1951 and co-starred Philip Loeb as Jake Goldberg. He and Gertrude Berg reprised their roles in a 1950 film of the same name. The show almost didn't get to the small screen at all: CBS executives were uncertain that the show would work on television as well as it did on radio. Berg prevailed, however, and picked up General Foods as its sponsor.
The Goldbergs was destined to spend almost a decade on television---but not without disruptions. In 1950, Philip Loeb was blacklisted and pressure was placed on Berg (who owned the television version as she had the radio original) to fire him. When she refused, CBS dropped it from their schedule by June 1951.
Eight months later, however NBC---the show's original broadcasting home---picked up the series for the 1952-53 season (with another re-naming, to Molly, in due course), with Harold Stone and then Robert H. Harris replacing Loeb as Jake. The rest of the television cast included Eli Mintz as Uncle David, Tom Taylor as Sammy, Arlene McQuade as Rosalie, Betty Bendyke as Dora Barnett, Susan Steel as Daisy Carey, and Jon Lormer as Henry Carey. On radio, Sammy and Rosalie had grown up and gotten married; on television, the characters were revived as teenagers.
In 1954, the show moved to the faltering DuMont network for a summer run. A final version, in 1955, was filmed (all of the others had been telecast live) and moved the Goldbergs from the Bronx to the New York suburb of Haverville. That same year, Philip Loeb, beset by depression and unable to find other work, committed suicide.
Aftermath
Gertrude Berg returned to television six years later in a situation comedy, "Mrs G. Goes to College," playing Sarah Green, a Molly Goldberg-like character. Despite being retitled "The Gertrude Berg Show" in mid-year, the program was cancelled after one season. Today, The Goldbergs are available to collectors and fans in a large number of surviving radio episodes and some surviving television episodes. The Ciesla Foundation in Washington, DC is currently working on a documentary about Gertrude Berg's impact on television titled Gertrude Berg: America's Molly Goldberg, directed by Aviva Kempner.