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THEME:
THE GOLDBERGS
From the late 1920s through the mid-1950s, the Goldbergs were the most widely familiar Jewish family in America, presented first on a long-running radio series, then on stage, film, and finally one of television's earliest situation comedies.
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Estate of Gertrude Berg and NJAB
(click images for more)
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This fictitious family was created by Gertrude Berg, who produced, wrote, and starred (as family matriarch Molly Goldberg) in every version of The Goldbergs. In all its manifestations, The Goldbergs offered a genial portrait of domestic life that demonstrated Jews' "at-home-ness" in America. The family's Jewishness was, for the most part, signaled by its older generations' comical speech — singsong rhythms, inverted syntax, malapropisms, and the occasional Yiddish interjection. During their years on radio, the Goldbergs also regularly celebrated Passover and the High Holidays and even alluded to Nazi anti-Semitism. On television, the family's integration into the American mainstream culminated, in the series' final season, with the family's move from a Bronx apartment to the suburbs.
The character of Molly Goldberg — an endearing, if somewhat scatterbrained homemaker, whose good intentions often led to comic mishaps — was not unlike her television contemporary, Lucille Ball's Lucy Ricardo, on I Love Lucy. Like Ball, Berg masked her talents, professionalism, and intelligence with the persona of a "simple" housewife and mother. Behind this comic image stood one of the few women who maintained creative control over her work in American broadcasting for decades.
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Collection of Peter H. Schweitzer (top)
The Jewish Museum (above) |
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