Gertrude Berg
Whenever I discover a gap in my television/pop culture culture, I have an immediate need to fill that gap. Aviva Kempner’s documentary, Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, was an important person and project I knew nothing about. To fill this information chasm, I contacted Kempner for an email interview. As detailed at the Cielsa Foundation website: “Ciesla Foundation produces and distributes award-winning films about strong and important, but often unknown, Jewish heroes. Its mission is to educate and inform audiences about social and public interest issues of the past and present through storytelling and filmmaking….Award-winning filmmaker Aviva Kempner, whose credits include Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, Today I Vote for My Joey, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, and Partisans of Vilna, is Ciesla’s director and founder. Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg chronicles the “humorous and eye-opening story of television pioneer Gertrude Berg. She was the creator, principal writer, and star of The Goldbergs, a popular radio show for 17 years, which became television’s very first character-driven domestic sitcom in 1949. Berg received the first Best Actress Emmy in history, and paved the way for women in the entertainment industry.” My thanks to Kempner for her time. I hope the interview motivates you to donate to the foundation and to Kempner’s efforts.
Tim O’Shea: I’m sure you have many ideas for subjects to pursue, but after wrapping 2002’s Today I Vote for My Joey how many concepts (ballpark figure) did you consider and set aside before deciding upon Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg?
Aviva Kempner: I was thinking about doing a few dramatic scripts and did not get much further than research. I also had a couple more documentary ideas but none were fundable at first glance. Another one did receive research funds and am now happily back on working on that film on The Rosenwald Schools. Once I went to the Jewish Museum in New York’s exhibit of Jews Entertaining America and saw the Molly Goldberg living room I knew that was my next film project.
O’Shea: In terms of researching Goldberg, was there one pivotal interview or discovery that really proved to be the critical aspect in building the documentary?
Kempner: When I decided to do the film and read about the blacklisting of Philip Loeb and how it hurt also Berg I knew I had a striking third act. I also did not know how big a media empire she had so I knew that I would have a lot to tell audiences that would propel her into the status that she so deserved.
O’Shea: Leba Hertz’s San Francisco Chronicle review of the documentary includes this line: “What especially marks a Kempner documentary is how she is able to take a single subject and use that person as a launching point for a microcosm of the times.” Is that something you aim to do with each of your documentaries?
Kempner: I am very obsessed with the 30’s and 40’s ’cause as a child of a Holocaust survivor it so sadly affected my family. So I cannot stop figuring out the challenges and horrors, which butted against the accomplishments and heroism of Jewish figures of those days.
O’Shea: How vital was Berg’s family in terms of getting the full story for the documentary.
Kempner: Before I do a biopic I always ask permission from the family and the Berg family was very willing to let me do the film, gave wonderful interviews and great access to photos.
O’Shea: Understandably, the troubles of actor Philip Loeb are vital part of the Goldberg show, but how did you cover that aspect of the story without allowing it to dominate the documentary’s overall message?
Kempner: I am hoping that one day a filmmaker makes a film on Loeb and Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg helped inspire that. I think there is a feature that needs to be made about him.
O’Shea: Who would you say is the target audience for a documentary like this? I would think mainly a U.S. audience, but I realized I was wrong when I saw that there are showings in Canada.
Kempner: Target audience is older citizens, especially Jewish ones. Also TV buffs, feminists, documentary and history fans.
O’Shea: You will be speaking at an upcoming event (UCLA’s The Goldberg’s TV Show DVD Launch)–were there already plans to compile the DVDs before you started the documentary or did it come about partially because of the documentary?
Kempner: I think UCLA was considering bringing out the shows for a long time and the success of Yoo-Hoo, Mrs Goldberg convinced them such a DVD release would be successful.
O’Shea: Speaking of DVDs, what kind of extras do you plan to have with the Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg DVD when it is released in mid-2010?
Kempner: Great stories from the interviews I conducted originally from the film with actors on the show, family members and more Gertrude Berg appearances, including a hilarious one with a hula hoop on Steve Allen and a poignant one about the Chanukah stories if I raise the money. There will be great details about how Eli Mintz came to America, more on Philip Loeb and his relationship with Zero Mostel, how Anne Bancroft and Steve McQueen appeared on The Goldbergs and other great stories about Berg.
O’Shea: As part of your documentary releases, how often do you try to do benefit showings, as was recently held for Columbus Torah Academy?
Kempner: Different groups all over the country, like a Detroit synagogue library fund and the arts fund for the Jewish Community Center in DC, used the film as joint fundraisers.
O’Shea: As stated at the website: “The Ciesla Foundation produces and distributes award-winning films about strong and important, but often unknown, Jewish heroes.” Given that Casuse is “the story of Larry Casuse, a young Native American activist and inspiration to his peers” a one-time deviation from the foundation’s mission–or an attempt to broaden the scope of the foundation’s mission?
Kempner: It’s a story that I knew as I was in New Mexico, am a character in the script and I knew Larry well. I joke that its still an under known hero and its almost Jewish being tribal.
O’Shea: In a down economy like the one we are currently in, how much more critical are the donations to a 501 (c) (3) public, tax exempt education foundation like yours?
Kempner: I have been able to make my film because of the last line in Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire is“I depend on the kindness of strangers.” Wonderful people all over America have helped me make my films and I am so grateful to them for their help. They are making history with me.
O’Shea: Is there anything you’d like to discuss that I neglected to ask about?
Kempner: How do I raise the $190,000 I am still in debt?