Gertrude Berg Movies and Career Information

Gertrude Berg (October 3, 1898 – September 14, 1966) was an American actress and screenwriter. A pioneer of classic radio, Berg 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. Berg was born Tilly Edelstein in Harlem, New York City, and attended public schools. She married Lewis Berg in 1918; they had two children, Cherney (1922–2003) and Harriet (1926–2003). She learned theater while producing skits at her father's Catskills Mountains resort in Fleischmanns, New York. She developed a semi-autobiographical skit, portraying a Jewish family in the New York tenements, into a radio show. On November 20, 1929, a 15-minute episode of The Rise of the Goldbergs was first broadcast on the NBC radio network. She started at $75 a week. Less than two years later, in the heart of the Great Depression, she let the sponsor propose a salary and was told, "Mrs. Berg, we can't pay a cent over $2,000 a week." Berg became inextricably identified as Molly Goldberg, the bighearted matriarch of her fictitious New York family who moved to Connecticut as a symbol of