Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg!
Date : Tuesday, August 25, 2026
Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Goldberg tells the remarkable story of Gertrude Berg — pioneering writer, producer, and star who created America’s first great sitcom, The Goldbergs. At a time when few positive Jewish characters were seen onscreen, Berg became a trailblazing media icon whose influence shaped television as we know it today.
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg!
Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Goldberg tells the remarkable story of Gertrude Berg, the pioneering writer, producer, and star who created America’s first great sitcom, The Goldbergs. At a time when few positive Jewish characters were seen onscreen, Berg became a trailblazing media icon whose influence shaped television as we know it today.
Berg became a cultural icon against the backdrop of the 20th Century’s most difficult years for American Jews. She incorporated social commentary into her shows during World War II and the Holocaust. In 1951, she took a stand against the Blacklist, refusing to fire her long-time co-star, Philip Loeb, who played her loving husband Jake. Loeb was a member of the Council of Actors Equity Association and fought the accusation that he was a Communist. Berg’s efforts proving fruitless, and she ended up settling with Loeb, who left the show rather than see it cancelled. In 1955, unable to find work and desperately unhappy, he committed suicide.
Among those interviewed for the film are actor Ed Asner, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, TV producers Gary David Goldberg and Norman Lear, TV anchor Andrea Roane, and NPR commentator Susan Stamberg.
Post-screening conversation with Director Aviva Kempner, moderated by Dr. Beatrice Gurwitz, Executive Director of the Capital Jewish Museum.
Presented in collaboration with the Capital Jewish Museum’s Blacklisted: An American Story
- Dir. Aviva Kempner | United States | 2009
- Documentary | 92 min
- English
Aviva Kempner is an award-winning filmmaker who has been making documentaries about under-sung Jewish heroes for more than four decades. Her films have included A Pocketful of Miracles: A Tale of Two Siblings, chronicling siblings’ survival of the Holocaust; Imagining the Indians: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting, The Spy Behind Home Plate, about baseball player and OSS spy Moe Berg, and more. A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Kempner is a voting rights and statehood advocate for Washington, D.C., and proudly serves on the board of DC Vote.
Dr. Beatrice Gurwitz currently serves as Executive Director of the Capital Jewish Museum, with extensive experience in nonprofit management and an academic background in Latin American and Jewish history. Prior to joining the Museum, she served as deputy director of the National Humanities Alliance promoting academic and public engagement with the humanities. She has consulted with the National Endowment for the Humanities and U.S. Department of State, and has taught at the University of Maryland, the University of California, Berkeley, and in the New York City public school system. She holds a BA from Wesleyan University and a PhD in History from the University of California, Berkely.
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