Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

Director Aviva Kempner calls Gertrude Berg the "most famous woman you've never heard of." Speaking to Free Press Houston by phone from New York City, Kempner mused on the turn of events that led to the smash success of the 1949 television show The Goldbergs, and its subsequent cancellation despite high ratings in the wake of the communist witch hunt and entertainment blacklist that rocked the nation at that time.
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg looks at the life of Berg from her humble youth to a fabulous career first in radio from the early 30s and the successful transition of The Goldbergs from radio to early television. Yet even being lead in the ratings didn't prevent politics from intervening when network execs and advertising concerns wanted the show's co-star Philip Loeb canned because of his left leaning advocacy. Loeb sponsored items like performer's rights in the new medium of television and was considered a red agitator in the parlance of the times.
Kempner finds interesting parallels between some of the events of Berg's time and our own. While dominant as a radio personality other voices on the air in the 30s included Father Coughlin who espoused hatred in his rants not unlike say Rush Limbaugh. "When things go bad, economics go south, people listen to demagogues,"Kempner lamented. I realize talking to Kempner that the reason I've heard of Coughlin was because his broadcasts had been covered in her previous documentary The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg.
The film charts the rising popularity of the radio show (which itself debuted the week after the 1929 Wall Street crash) to other trends of that era. By the time the show transcends to television Berg's not just another star but the second most influential woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt. There's so much in Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg that rings a bell of recognition. Berg was the first woman to win an Emmy Award. The blacklist eventually drove Loeb to suicide, an event fictionalized in the 1976 movie The Front. No irony is lost when the show that replaces The Goldberg's on the CBS lineup is I Love Lucy.
All these facts and more are brought to life through Kempner's tireless editing of archival footage. Researching to find this footage was "the hardest work," of the film states Kempner "and clearing the rights at over $300,000, it's biggest expenditure."
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg opens in an exclusive engagement at the River Oaks Three.