Watch Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg For Free

Thanks for the memories!

Did you people see the same film I saw?

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Although "Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg" is not superbly edited, it is fun to watch, fascinating, and certainly historically significant. The film, like Mrs. (Gold)Berg - and perhaps many of our own Jewish mothers and grandmothers - is a pivotal feminist entity with a sense of humor. This documentary also touches on the blacklisting/red scare era in America, of which we need constant reminders. Kudos to Director Aviva Kempner for finally recognizing a woman whose prolific accomplishments, until now left on a dusty old shelf, shaped the future of American media and culture.A film worth seeing!

Gertrude Berg was a force to be reckoned with. In 1929,she produced, wrote & acted as the head of a Jewish American household,by the name of Tilly Goldberg,in a series called,The Goldbergs (how original!). Five times a week,America tuned in on the original Jewish mama,and her family. The series made it to early television in 1949,and was a runaway hit.Gertrude Berg even wrote the commercials that intertwined with the episodes (one minute Tilly would be talking about recipe's,then seamlessly segueing into an ad for coffee). Aviva Kempner (The Life & Times Of Hank Greenburg)directs a pleasant enough documentary of a pioneer of early television,who by the end of the 1950's,was pretty much forgotten in the wake of Lucille Ball,etc. During it's initial run (1949-1951),the show experienced an unpleasant run-in with the goon squad that was the House Of Unamerican Activities Commitee (H.U.A.C.),due to the fact that co star,Phillip Loeb was an accused Communist sympathizer. When sponsors started pulling out funding for the show,Berg was forced to replace Loeb with another actor to play her beloved husband (only after the show went on a brief hiatus). When the show was revived (on another television network),the letters of protest over Phillip Loeb being replaced flooded the network, but it was already too late (I won't spoil it by revealing what happened).The series would continue to run until 1955,when it was eventually phased out. The film gets support from spoken testimonies from such personae as Supreme Court Justice,Ruth Bader Ginsburg,and producer,Norman Lear (creator of 'All In The Family','Maude' & 'The Jeffersons'). The film also gets some nice mileage from original grainy black & white kine scopes of 'The Goldbergs',as well as the one off feature film,'Molly'(also known as 'Meet The Goldbergs')from 1950 (basically an extended 90 episode,minus the commercials). This film will be of interest to anybody who follows early television,or obscure pop culture. Not rated,but contains absolutely nothing to offend even the most blue-nosed prude.

History is replete with countless stories of exceptional individuals. Unfortunately, when people discuss famous women, African Americans, Hispanics, ,etc. they tend to lean towards those individuals who are better known. Every so often there is the exception, the telling of those not remembered or forgotten, this documentary being one of them. Going into the theater I carried with me only the knowledge of who Getrude Berg was. I came out with a deep appreciation of what she accomplished in her life as a writer of 12,000 scripts; first lady of television, etc. and her overall impact. I was impressed especially at her work on behalf of her costar Phillip Loeb during the Communist witchhunts of the 1950s. This is an exceptional documentary and worth taking the time to see.

The story of Gertrude Berg, creator of Molly Goldberg, is told in a slow-starting but ultimately affecting documentary that concentrates on her professional life as the better story -- when you write the script for a five-times weekly radio show for twenty years, star in it twice a day and follow that up with half a dozen years in a weekly situation comedy for television, you don't have that much time for a personal life.But the story of Miss Berg and her ultimate failure-by-success -- it reached the point where instead of Molly Goldberg being a recognizable expression of the American spirit, she became too old-fashionedly Jewish, viewed as caricature -- is only half the story. Within the context of her life is told the tale of her television husband, played brilliantly by Phillip Loeb, smeared by the Blacklist, forced off the air and ultimately driven to suicide. That's the real heart-breaker of this movie.The clips with which fill this movie seem to have been deliberately chosen to be grainy and scratchy, perhaps because that would show their age. Instead they wind up being annoying in their choices. That, however, is a rather small complaint and, should you see this on television instead of in a theater -- as I did -- you probably will not notice.