More in ‘The Goldbergs’

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 ...