Book Alert / Gertrude Berg -- "Something On My Own"

Gertrude Berg -- "Something On My Own" And American Broadcasting, 1929-1956 by Glenn D. Smith, Jr., Syracuse UP '07, 293 pages, ISBN 081560887X. Index, references, source notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Based on his book jacket photograph alone, it's clear that author Glenn D. "Pete" Smith, Jr., communications professor at Mississippi State University, never listened to or watched the fabulously popular Molly Goldberg live on radio or TV. Nor is it likely that many Americans younger than 60 did either.

Yet for those on the other side of that divide, the words "Yoo hoo, Mrs. Goldberg" are as evocative as anything happening during the middle years of the last century. Dispensing folk wisdom to her neighbors out the window of her brick urban tenement, she comes across as a warm, welcoming working class housewife, making do with a smile on her face.

But, as Smith tells us, Molly's creator, Gertrude Berg, "was a cultivated woman of taste and means." She wrote and produced The Goldbergs beginning in 1929, at a time when men were the unquestioned leaders of the broadcast industry. In so doing, she communicated a sympathetic Jewish presence, particularly for millions in the Heartland who may have never met a Jew.

But she did a lot more as well: "A pioneer in the concept of product tie-in, she parlayed the show's popularity into a movie, short stories and even a cookbook." And when called upon to fire co-star Philip Loeb, who was blacklisted during the Red scare of the 1950s, she refused, striking a blow for liberty. All in all, a pleasantly revealing profile of a cultural icon.