The Inescapable Goldbergs

This week Mrs. Gertrude Berg, authoress and leading lady of The Goldbergs ("Rags to Riches" with a Yiddish accent), becomes practically inescapable. Her program, which originated in 1929, is already being heard over 23 CBS stations and MBS's WOR. The foam of her soapy masterwork for Procter & Gamble will henceforth also pour from 30 stations of NBC's Red Network. The Goldbergs will be on the air morning, noon and night: first with NBC at 11:30 a.m. E.D.S.T., then with CBS at 5:15, and finally via transcription with WOR next dawning. No other radio show ever had such a thorough airing.

As scripteuse and heroine of The Goldbergs, small, bulging, sloe-eyed Mrs. Berg has earned $5,000 a week. The addition of the NBC stations will jack this up about $1,500. This stipend would make her the highest-paid woman in radio. But Mrs. Berg is no woman for half measures. In whatever time she can spare from The Goldbergs, she whips together a serial called Kate Hopkins ("The Exciting Story of a Visiting Nurse") which brings her an extra $1,000 weekly. Total gross take: $7,500 a week.

To make her $7,500, Mrs. Berg works from 6 a.m. to 5:30 daily. She can turn out a 15-minute script in about an hour, whether it involves The Goldbergs or Kate Hopkins. Typical dialogue from her No. 1 show (in which she plays the gentle Molly Goldberg) gives a hint of how she manages to work so fast:

Molly: Jake?

Jake: Jake.

Molly: You are home?

Jake: If I'm here, I'm home.

Now 40, Mrs. Berg studied writing and acting at Columbia University, first broke into radio in 1929 with a script called Effie and Laura, which sank without a trace. Then she heard one of Milt Gross's dialect stories over the air. Thereupon inspiration welled up, and next day she started in on The Goldbergs. By 1931 she was in clover.

Mrs. Berg is convinced that her scripts make for better interracial relations. She makes sure that some of the Goldbergs' best friends are Irish. She and her radio character are practically the same personality. She is a great one for nosing around Manhattan's lower East Side. Not long ago she crashed a Polish wedding, passing herself off to some as a friend of the bride, to others as a relative of the groom.

She lives in a ten-room duplex on Central Park West, has an impressive estate in upper New York. Together with her husband, a sugar technician, and her 15-year-old daughter, she likes to spend an evening parodying radio shows. Her favorite is the Good Will Hour, for her own version of which she makes up some pretty startling problems.

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