More in ‘Gertrude Berg’

They’re both opening this Friday, but, otherwise, Aviva Kempner’s documentary Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg and Sacha Baron Cohen’s mockumentary Brüno have little in common. One’s a reverent tribute to Gertrude Berg, who the filmmaker argues was the inventor of the sitcom; the other is—well, you know. But an essay in the New York Press contends ...

Before there was Lucille Ball, there was Gertrude Berg. On the same network, in fact: Berg’s show, The Goldbergs, aired in primetime on CBS-TV when Ball’s antics were still confined to the network’s radio station. But, while Lucy is constantly in reruns, Berg—who, according to Aviva Kempner’s new documentary Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, virtually invented ...

At 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 20, 1929, in an NBC radio studio above Madison Avenue, a man, a woman, a boy, and a girl began reading a fifteen-minute script into a live microphone and launched one of the twentieth century’s most successful entertainment franchises. The program was The Rise of the Goldbergs (soon to ...