Gertrude Berg created, wrote and starred in the long running radio and TV series The Goldbergs.

It may be that every minority culture has had, or will have, its Cosby Show moment.

That is to say, an artifact of popular culture that is that community's entry-point into middle-American homes.

Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg is a documentary about one such show, the almost-forgotten The Goldbergs, which was a ratings powerhouse as a radio sitcom through the '30s and '40s, and a TV sitcom in the early '50s.

For many Americans of the time, The Goldbergs was the extent of their familiarity with the Jewish experience.

Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg is also a testament to the power of the individual -- that individual being a dynamo of a Jewish mother named Gertrude Berg, who created a character, developed a show around her and then took near-total control over her wildly-popular kinder.

Stylistically, Aviva Kempner's documentary is no ground-breaker. But its old-school talking-heads/narration/footage format suits its subject matter, and the remarkable story needs no window dressing.

The daughter of a Catskills resort owner, the former Tillie Edelstein married well -- her husband, Louis Berg, invented instant coffee, and loved her enough to indulge her urge to write character comedy when they moved to New York.

In the ad hoc new world of radio, it fell to her in 1929 to give voice to her own creation, Molly Goldberg, who would communicate via "Yoo hoos" with her neighbours in their alleyway windows. (So seat-of-the-pants was the production, that for street noise, they literally lowered a microphone out of their high-rise studio window).

As it evolved, The Goldbergs turned into the great American polyglot -- with completely Americanized teenage kids a la Father Knows Best's Bud and Princess, and a traditional homelife that included Seder dinners recited by actual rabbis.

As the history of The Goldbergs unfolds, it's fascinating to see how the series surfed over the troubles of its era. We hear how the show on CBS was counter-programmed on NBC by the notoriously anti-semitic Father Coughlin, who'd be ranting about the Jews on one channel while Passover was being celebrated on another. (And though politics seldom entered the scripts, Berg did mark the nightmare of Germany's kristallnacht by having a brick go through the Goldbergs' window during Seder).

Later, in its TV incarnation, The Goldbergs would fall prey to another evil, when the respected Broadway actor Philip Loeb, who played Jake Goldberg, was targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (he denied under oath he was a communist). Berg discovered the limits of her waning influence when Loeb was fired over her objection. (He later committed suicide, a tragedy that would inspire his friend Zero Mostel's film The Front).

And in the end, as the Jewish community became more assimilation-conscious, The Goldbergs became an embarrassment to some. Ed Asner is interviewed recalling how uncomfortable the show made him in his desire to be accepted by Gentile society.

Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg is almost prehistoric subject matter by the standards of our short-attention-span society. But its lessons about the power of pop culture remain powerfully true.
More Movie Reviews