On a rainy day in New York back in 2009, Northlight Artistic Director BJ Jones saw a documentary on Gertrude Berg. Yoo-hoo, Mrs.Goldberg followed the story of “the most famous woman in America you’ve never heard of.” Years later, Northlight is bringing her story to life on stage in a world premiere play!
From The First Lady of Television Director, BJ Jones-
In 2009, on a rainy afternoon in New York, Candy and I decided to keep dry by going to a movie at a movie theatre near Lincoln Center. I saw an ad in the Times for a documentary called Yoo Hoo Mrs. Goldberg, a film about Gertrude Berg, one of the most famous women in broadcasting in the ’30s and ’40s, whose radio program was wildly successful and uplifting in a post depression era stretching into the war years. I remembered seeing her television version of the program as a very young child. I thought it would be a terrific play about the time frame, exposing the House Un-American Activities Committee and the antisemitic attitudes of the time.
I reached out to a local playwright and commissioned them after a talk on my vision of the piece. Some time later, they delivered a treatment, which we then discussed changes to. For whatever reason, the changes didn’t emerge, and the project lay fallow for some time, until I saw Jim Sherman’s play Chegall in School. I admired the work, so I took Jim to coffee to discuss his interest in various projects, including the Gertrude Berg project. He seemed keen on the idea, and after doing some research, including seeing the documentary, he delivered a script some months later that aligned with the original vision for the piece I had hoped for in 2009.
He even spent some time with the director of the documentary Aviva Kempner and appeared in her next documentary. I always had Cindy Gold in mind for Gertrude Berg, even all the way back to 2009. When this version arrived, I knew we had to produce it. I applied for a workshop from the Steinberg Foundation, and last summer they brought us out to the Colorado New Plays Festival to workshop the play, with the cast you will see in our production.
What’s truly fascinating is how prescient the piece is, given what is happening in our world today. The first speeches feel as if they were written this morning, but in truth, they echo Gertrude Berg’s own opening monologues as rendered by Jim’s own gifted writing. Last month, the New Yorker published an article called The Forgotten Inventor of the Sitcom. It could not be more in the zeitgeist.
The result is The First Lady of Television.
From the director of Yoo-hoo Mrs.Goldberg, Aviva Kempner
I saw an exhibit about famous followers of Judaism on television at the Jewish Museum, and I was so intrigued by the section on Gertrude Berg and The Goldbergs that I decided my next film had to be on her. I had just released a documentary on Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg and was happy to focus on an unknown female Jewish heroine. I was impressed by how she is credited with developing a positive Jewish family radio sitcom when anti-Semitism was running at an all-time high, and it was the first family sitcom on television. Ed Asner, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Norman Lear, and Susan Stamberg were happy to be in the film. And she had stood up for her stage husband Philip Loeb, who was a victim of the blacklist. Berg’s family members talked about how Berg herself lived on Park Avenue and did not have the accent she created playing Molly. And she wrote all the shows’ scripts, and her husband typed them.
Even though Gertrude Berg’s work was largely erased from the airwaves and her career was forgotten for decades, Northlight is overjoyed to share her story with a brand new generation of audiences. The First Lady of Television opens September 11! We can’t wait to see you at the theatre.
