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Molly Goldberg:
A 1950s Icon
by Myrna
Hant, The Center for
the Study of Women at UCLA, California USA
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Gertrude Berg invents the
character Molly Goldberg and
forever after people think of
Berg as Molly Goldberg.
“Gertrude Berg, who created
Molly, wrote all her lines,
played her for two decades on
radio and another five years on
television.” (Hinckley, 2002)
Who was Gertrude Berg/Molly
Goldberg and how did she so
effectively represent the
hegemonic ideologies of the 1950s?
First, she glorifies one of the
values so pervasive in America:
motherhood. This buxom and
benevolent meddler who can solve
problems by mixing good common
sense, a considerable dab of
compassion, but most of all
wisdom becomes an archetype for
motherhood during this era.
Along with motherhood she
celebrates the family unit and
the need for family to work
together to protect each other.
She also embodies a sense of
hope and goodness that Americans
believe about themselves, that
this land is generous enough to
accept and embrace “the other”
without restrictions.
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GERTRUDE
BERG/MOLLY GOLDBERG
According
to Joyce Antler “Berg was probably the first woman to
write, produce and star in her own TV vehicle.” (Antler,1998,
p. 97) She was born in 1899 in Harlem of Eastern
European immigrants who owned a small summer hotel in
the Catskills. As Berg was growing up she wrote scripts
to entertain her parents and their guests. At the age of
fourteen she created a character named Maltke Talnitzky who
later morphed into Molly Goldberg, an amalgam of Berg’s
mother and grandmother Czerny.
Her first attempt at writing about Maltke is The
Other Woman. When Maltke’s husband
wants to leave her, she pleads her case in court against
the other woman by explaining, “My face is not on top of
such a long neck but it’s a face, no?...So
the legs are a little short, the knees maybe knock a
little but who listens? There’s a
few lumps here and there and the waist isn’t so ay, ay,
and the dishwater eats off the nail polish, but whose
fault is that? And if I’m not stylish can I help it if
skinny dresses don’t fit me? Did I ask for what I look
like? I’m a woman, plain everyday woman, and you think
my husband is such a Beau Brummel he
needs something better? He doesn’t. Believe me. For the
kind of man he is, I’m good enough.” (Berg, 1961,
p. 155) Thus begins Berg’s writing career which spans
over half a century. |
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Molly
Goldberg, with her malapropisms, cadence and unique
syntax, offers a comical approach to family life in
the 1950’s. Berg tells
Morris Freedman in 1954
that “you’ll notice there’s no dialect, just
intonation and word order. A
question at the end of a statement, ‘So you are
coming already?’ Sometimes it’s a matter of
literally translating a Yiddish idiom, like ‘Throw
an eye in the refrigerator.’ “(Freedman,
1954, p.360). “If it’s nobody, I’ll call
back” or “Give me a swallow, the glass.” (Hinckley,
2002) She herself is not an immigrant but in order
to maintain the accuracy of her dialogues she
frequently visits the lower East Side in New York
and listens to the conversations of the shoppers and
peddlers.
MOTHERHOOD
With
all of her faults, the lovable Molly Goldberg is the
representation of the shtetl mother
in America and the Demeter woman, the mother
archetype who provides and gives and takes care of
others. “Molly Goldberg possesses many of the traits
that are traditionally associated with the Jewish
Mother: being warm, motherly, resourceful, nurturing
and problem-solving and on the flip side of this
picture, being overbearing and inescapable.”
(Pearl, 1999, p. 86) She
represents a large-spirited woman, who, regardless
of her obvious Jewishness,
is attuned to the problems of all mankind and
definitely wants to help resolve the issues.
According to Charles Angoff,
Molly is “the Mixer and the Fixer….whose heart
bleeds for every unmarried girl and starving butcher
and lonely grocer and who is as quick as the
proverbial lightening in concocting ideas to get the
‘right’ girl and ‘right’ man together, to straighten
out family squabbles, to help out a reformed thief.”
(Angoff, 1951,
pp. 12-13) And she goes about solving these problems
with obvious cleverness, humorous self-deprecation,
devoted commitment, determination and most of all
prodigious strength.
FAMILY
From
its inception, according to Lynn Spigel,
people believe that television will bring families
closer together because the children will want to
stay at home and watch TV with their parents. It is
going to be an activity that everyone can share. And
there is growing concern in the 1950s
that the “American” family values are increasingly
being dissipated by diversity within the society.
What is
a better vehicle for the promulgation of
old-fashioned family values than The Goldbergs?
This show and other fifties TV families are a
“surrogate community. Television provided an
illusion of the ideal neighborhood-the
way it was supposed to be. Just when people had left
their lifelong companions in the city, television
sitcoms pictured romanticized versions of neighbor and
family bonding. Mrs. Goldberg leaned out of her
window to greet her neighbor,
Mrs. Bloom.” (Spigel,
1992, p. 129)
According to Joyce Antler, middle-class American
life is depicted in the neighborliness,
the giving and taking of advice and the borrowing of
a cup of sugar. The notion of a neighborhood is
deliberately emphasized in the opening of the show
which is an outside shot of the Bronxville apartment
at 1038 E. Tremont Avenue with Molly leaning out of
the window yelling, “Yoohoo,
Mrs. Bloom” or convincing her audience that Sanka is
the best possible beverage for everyone. The
impression is that we are having an intimate
conversation with a trusted neighbor.
When the program moves in 1954 to Haverville,
a fictitious suburban community, the camera spans
the neighborhood at the
beginning of every show. Whether in a New York
tenement house or a spacious suburb, Molly is always
your faithful and reliable friend. Also, inherent in
the message is that even though a family has moved
to the suburbs it’s still possible to have good neighbors and
be a cohesive family. This is a deliberate and
reassuring message for a recently mobile populace
anxious about the advantages of moving to the
suburbs and breaking ties with extended family
members.
Everyone can identify with the fighting and
jealousies experienced by not only the nuclear
Goldberg family but the assortment of extended
family relatives. The gossip and peccadilloes of
people are weekly ingredients for Berg’s show. In a 1949
episode, the miserly and rich Cousin Simon thinks
he’s had a heart attack and decides to give his
money to his poor relations; but as soon as he gets
well, he decides not to give the money after all.
Molly wisely proclaims, “Maybe there’s a Simon in
every family and a little bit of Simon in everyone,
waiting too long to do what he should.” |
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THE “OTHER”
AND AMERICAN VALUES
Much has
been written about how non-threatening this obviously
Jewish family is to the Gentile public of the 1950s.
Molly seems to represent a conglomeration of flawed, but
lovable, characteristics that make her largely
non-Jewish audience feel comfortable that she is trying
desperately to be a good American. She represents to her
audience the honest efforts of the immigrant extolling
the virtues and blessings of the American value system,
never taking for granted her great fortune to be in a
country that allows “the other” a place. In a 1949
episode, the Goldbergs get a
letter from relations in Europe that they hadn’t heard
from since before the War, obvious Holocaust survivors.
Molly, with her prominent pictures of George Washington
and Abraham Lincoln in the living room, praises this
bounteous country. “In other nations it took generations
to have what we have. I never get over the wonderment of
America”. According to Berg, Molly easily combines love
of country and a universal religiosity. "Next to the
Constitution of the United States, the Ten Commandments
came first. Not only were all men created equal, they
also had to honor their
mother and their father. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
interchanged easily with Washington, Lincoln and
Jefferson, and the Philistines had nothing on a person
who didn’t vote.” (Berg, 1961,
p. 167) Because Molly is so likable, most critics view
her and her clan as excellent ambassadors for acceptance
of Jews as different, but trying to be like Gentiles. |
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Contested ideologies are becoming more prominent by the
mid-1950s. As the show
matures, Molly becomes much less “old country” in her
appearance as she dresses in a more sophisticated manner
and her hair is stylish. The heavy Jewish accents
disappear and the show no longer has specifically Jewish
celebrations such as a Passover dinner or mention of the
High Holy Days of Rosh Hashonah and
Yom Kippur. Old and new political ideologies are
reflected in the transformations. The Goldbergs become
more affluent and move to Haverville (according
to one critic, David Marc, the city of the “haves”) and
no longer want to present themselves as the poor
immigrant refugees. World War II has been over for ten
years and the country’s tolerance for Jews and their
differences may have waned. Jews, by the 1950s have
begun their assimilation into the mainstream so their
“customs” may not be so unique. Or it could be that
Gertrude Berg decides that a new face to the show might
increase its popularity with an audience that by now is
accepting the suburban way of life and its concomitant
isolation for the family.
As the
1950s fades, so, too does the idealized world that
Gertrude Berg creates. However, love of family,
magnanimous acceptance of “the other” and the sustenance
of the home environment are values that Americans still
find very appealing. The Goldbergs will
always represent “a vision of a loving family, of
interdenominational brotherhood, of middle-class ideals
of American life…a soul-inspiring testament to the
wonder-working powers of the American way, a daily
chapter in the saga of hope and perseverance that struck
a profound…chord.” (Antler, 1998, p. 91) A diagnostic
critique of The Goldbergs is
not just a foray into historical nostalgia but rather a
delving into what ideologies they represent and what
hegemonic values are promulgated for the relationships
between men and women, parents and children and families
and society. It is enlightening for the modern viewer to
go beyond the quaintness and the perceived outdated
mores of The Goldbergs and
decode the universal and abiding messages that are still
relevant for the twenty-first century. |
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REFERENCES
Angoff,
Charles (1951). “The Goldbergs and
Jewish Humor”. Congress
Weekly 18:13.
Antler, Joyce (1998). Ed. Talking
Back: Images of Jewish Women in Popular Culture.
Hanover & London: Brandeis University Press.
Berg,
Gertrude (1961). Molly
and Me. New York: McGraw Hill.
Freedman, Morris. (1954).
“The Real Molly Goldberg: Baalebostah of
the Air Waves”. Commentary 21: 359-365.
Hinckley, David (2002) “Molly Goldberg”, New York
Daily News. September 10.
Pearl, J. and J. Pearl
(1999) The Chosen Image: Television’s Portrayal of
Jewish Themes and Characters. Jefferson,
North Carolina: McFarland & Co., Inc.
Spigel,
Lynn. (1992). Make Room for TV: Television and the
Family Ideal in Postwar America.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
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First published
in Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol.
5:2 (Spring 2008). |
Photos courtesy of The New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts/Billy Rose Theatre Division.
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