![]() ![]() The concept was partly autobiographical with Molly based on Berg’s grandmother, Jake on Berg’s father, and the kids on her own children. Molly discussed her husband Jake, a wedding dress wholesaler, and their thoroughly American kids Sammy and Rosalie, who were hep to the jive. Bloom!” as Molly hailed her neighbor for a good gossip. #I remember mama tv show seriesThe radio series is famous for its catchphrase “Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Twelve radio episodes from the war years are included as bonus MP3s in this set. This tremendously popular show ran almost continuously, sometimes on more than one network, through 1945. Playing Molly Goldberg, Berg became a rare powerful woman in the industry who controlled her own program. The mythological impetus can be seen in its original title from 1929, The Rise of the Goldbergs. Gertrude Berg created, produced and wrote The Goldbergs for radio, where its combo of warmth, simple stories, funny accents, and determined universalism made it a hit. Still, the more deeply represented Jewishness of the suburban family in the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man, where the plot turns on rabbis and bar mitzvahs, has largely been absent from pop depictions of Jewish Americans ever since Al Jolson told his rabbi father that instead of being a cantor, he wanted to don blackface (like a real American) and be The Jazz Singer in that classic paradigm of assimilation. Mind you, this show depicts an important side of Jewish life in America, and it was necessary for immigrants to see themselves in pop culture. “Don’t put words in my vocabalerry,” warns Molly. #I remember mama tv show fullThe comedy, the very identity of the program unreels in heavily accented banter and gestures, full of “nu’s” and “so’s” and malapropisms and mispronunciations. So who’s that hanging on the wall over the piano? Nu, George Washington, the father of mein country, who else? The Goldberg’s Jewishness is conveyed in terms of such ethnic humor at the service of Americanism. In this world, foreigners were amusing but good-hearted people who were just trying to be as American as apple strudel. The show is an example of “melting pot” art from the tail end of the Ellis Island era in popular culture, when the wide variety of accents heard in city streets was reflected on the vaudeville stage, on radio, in comics, and wherever pop culture served the mythology of the mainstream. ![]() As we get deeper into the series, we go deeper into real Jewish tradition. At least that’s how it seems in the earliest episodes here, but hold the phone. Then again, for all the Yiddish humor, we don’t initially see the Goldbergs observe Jewish holidays, go to temple, or show any signs of living Jewishly - aside from an almost concealed menorah on the sideboard. It takes about five minutes of watching any random episode to conclude that there’s never been a more Jewish show on television. Thanks to the archival restoration efforts of UCLA, what remains of The Goldbergs can now be seen, 60 years later. ![]() Since both shows were live for most of their run, these benchmarks haven’t been easily accessible. The other show was The Goldbergs, a phenomenal radio hit whose TV career was rocky, to say the least. It ran consistently on the same network and achieved such popularity that when it was canceled, public outcry briefly revived it. One show was Mama (aka I Remember Mama), about a Norwegian-American family. Both shows were broadcast live and ran until 1956. In 1949, CBS began broadcasting two heartwarming sitcoms about an older generation of immigrants who spoke heavily accented English while raising their Americanized offspring. ![]()
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