Tillie Edelstein, better known as Gertrude Berg, was one of the most fascinating cultural figures of mid-20th century America. And testament to the power of writing what you know.

She developed a radio series in the late 1920s, based on family life in a Bronx tenement, starring herself as the matriarch, Molly Goldberg, that was credited with cheering up Americans during the Great Depression and integrating Jewish mores into mainstream America.

Replete with its neighborhood call of “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Bloom,” archetypically accompanied by Molly leaning out her window, “The Goldbergs” became a seminal and famously affirmative CBS TV sitcom bringing gentle, multi-generational family humor between 1949 and 1956 and making Berg the first actress ever to win an Emmy. There are books, a prior play o

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