Trivia

Getrude Berg's "The Goldbergs" (on NBC and CBS from 1931 to 1950) was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1989.

In 1952, Gertrude and hes husband adopted two war orphans who resided in Europe with foster families. They were a 10 year old Italian boy and a 12 year old French girl.

Her two children were Cherney Berg (1922-2003) and Harriet (1926-2003).

Awards received were the Quaker City Humanitarian Award, Veterans of Foreign Wars Citation, Girls club of American Motherhood medal, U.S. Treasury department certificate of Merit, and the National Conference of Christians and Jews plaque.

Won Broadway's 1959 Tony Award as Best Actress (Dramatic) for "A Majority of One."

Profiled in book "Funny Ladies" by Stephen Silverman. (1999)

Wrote a book "The Rise Of The Goldbergs" and a comic strip "Goldbergs".

Biography in: "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald S. Smith, pg. 44-45. New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387

Older brother Charles died of diphtheria when he was seven.

Grandfather Mordecai was bootlegger during Prohibition.

Graduated from Wadleigh High School for Girls in Harlem, New York.

Her radio show "The Rise Of The Goldbergs" premiered on NBC Radio in 1929 as a fifteen-minute program that aired weekly. The show ran for two years before it found a sponsor. 10 million listeners turned in to every episode. When the program moved to CBS Radio in 1936 it was re-titled "The Goldbergs".

Attended Columbia University but never graduated.

Wrote an advice column "Mama Talks".

Her husband Lewis, who was a chemist by training, was on the team during World War I that invented instant coffee for use by US troops.

Wrote and starred in a Broadway version of The Goldbergs that ran from February to July 1948. It was called "Me & Molly"..

In 1955 she co-authored "The Molly Goldberg Jewish Cookbook" with the food writer Myra Waldo.

Her first radio show aired in 1927, it was called "Effie & Laura" and was about two clerks in a dime store. CBS canceled it after one episode because the character Laura remarked "marriages are never made in heaven".

Put her character's name "Molly Goldberg" on a licensed brand of casual dresses with Suburban Cottons and later Riverdale Frocks.

In the mid-1960s she became the spokesperson for S.O.S. soap pads.

In 1961 she published her autobiography "Molly And Me: The Memoirs Of Gertrude Berg".

Her post "Goldbergs" career included winning a Tony award in 1959 as best actress in the stage play "A Majority of One".

In 1951, Berg won the first ever Emmy Award for Lead Actress in a Television Series in her twentieth year of playing the role. The show would stay in production for five more years.

In 1959, she won the Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance in A Majority of One.

She was a pioneer of classic radio, and she was one of the first women to create, write, produce, and star in a long-running hit when she premiered her serial comedy-drama The Rise of the Goldbergs (1929), later known as The Goldbergs.

In 1961, Berg won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theater.

In 1961, Berg made a last stab at television success in the Four Star Television situation comedy, Mrs. G. Goes to College (retitled The Gertrude Berg Show at midseason), playing a 62-year-old widow who enrolls in college. The series was cancelled after one season.

A biography of Berg, Something on My Own: Gertrude Berg and American Broadcasting, 1929-1956, by Glenn D. Smith, Jr. (Syracuse University Press) appeared in 2007.

Aviva Kempner's 2009 documentary, Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, deals with Berg's career, and to an extent, her personal life.

Berg's chronically unstable mother Dinah, grieving over the death of her young son, experienced a series of nervous breakdowns and later died in a sanitarium.