I have to admit, I was pretty much completely unfamiliar with Gertrude Berg and had only a vague recollection of the title “The Goldbergs” before I read this blog post by Mark Evanier. And for someone whose knowledge of popular culture is as wide as it is shallow ….

Anyway, I’d love someday to see the documentary referenced by Evanier. Perhaps it will turn up on Ovation or PBS at some point. Mrs. Berg, who was the first-ever best actress winner at the Emmys, wrote, produced and starred in “The Goldbergs” on radio throughout the 30s and 40s, bringing it to TV in 1949. That’s a pretty remarkable achievement at a time when women had less say in the upper echelons of the entertainment industry. Evanier even says that she was “in some ways, the first TV situation comedy star.” Let that one sink in. She also had a gutsy response when the actor who played her husband was blacklisted, refusing to fire him. (He quit, being as loyal to her as she was to him and not wanting to cause her trouble.)

It’s amazing, and sad, that she isn’t better-known. The New York Times review of the documentary calls it a study in “media celebrity and collective forgetfulness in the age of information overload.”