Before Lucy, Gertrude Berg was “The First Lady Of Television”

‘The Goldbergs’ was a comedy-drama broadcast from 1929 to 1946 on radio, and from 1949 to 1956 on television. The program was devised by writer-actress Gertrude Berg in 1928 and sold to the NBC radio network the following year. It was a domestic comedy featuring the home life of a Jewish family, supposedly located at 1038 East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. In addition to writing the scripts and directing each episode, Berg starred in the series. The link above is to a clip of a 1949 episode on CBS.

The television version ran on CBS Television from 1949 to 1951 and co-starred Philip Loeb as Jake Goldberg. He and Gertrude Berg reprised their roles in a 1950 film of the same name. The show almost didn’t get to the small screen at all: CBS executives were uncertain that the show would work on television as well as it did on radio. Berg prevailed, however, and picked up General Foods (Sanka coffee) as its sponsor.

Berg, who continued to write every episode, insisted that no studio audience be used and made sure everyday events formed the base for the stories; she was once quoted as saying she avoided “anything that will bother people … unions, fund raising, Zionism, socialism, intergroup relations. … I keep things average. I don’t want to lose friends.” Berg’s hard work and determination paid off. In 1950, she won the first Best Actress Emmy Award for her role as Molly on The Goldbergs.

The Goldbergs was destined to spend almost a decade on television—but not without disruptions. In 1950, Philip Loeb was blacklisted and pressure was placed on Berg (who owned the television version as she had the radio original) to fire him. When she refused, General Foods cancelled their sponsorship, and CBS dropped it from their schedule by June 1951.

Eight months later, however NBC—the show’s original broadcasting home—picked up the series for the 1952–53 season, but informed Gertrude Berg that if she persisted in allowing Philip Loeb to remain with the series, it would never be seen on television again. She finally gave in, and the series reappeared in a twice-weekly, early-evening 15 minute format (with another change in title, to Molly, in due course), with Harold Stone and then Robert H. Harris replacing Loeb as Jake, though Berg quietly continued to pay a salary to Loeb.

After The Goldbergs ended its CBS run, Tom Taylor replaced Larry Robinson in the role of Molly’s son, Sammy. The rest of the television cast included Eli Mintz as Uncle David, Arlene McQuade as Rosalie and Betty Bendyke as Dora Barnett. On radio, Sammy and Rosalie had grown up and gotten married; on television, the characters were revived as teenagers. During this time, Gertrude Berg and Arlene McQuade appeared as their characters of Molly and Rosalie, respectively, when they guested on NBC-TV’s Texaco Star Theater starring Milton Berle.

In 1954, the show reverted to a weekly half-hour, moving to the DuMont network for a run from April to October. The series was originally intended to run for six months on DuMont, but, due to financial difficulties, the network was unable to fulfill the $5 million contract, despite Nielsen ratings estimated at ten million viewers. The DuMont shows were aired live.

A final version, aired in syndication, was filmed in 1955 and aired on local stations until 1956. This version moved the Goldbergs from the Bronx to the New York suburb of Haverville. In a way this mirrored the real life journey of many Jewish families from the Bronx to the suburbs and other parts of New York during this period. However, this was considered the death knell of the show, as it was felt that the Goldbergs were only the Goldbergs in the Bronx. Also in 1955, Philip Loeb, beset by depression and unable to find other work, committed suicide. In 1957, Gertrude Berg made her last two appearances as Molly Goldberg: first on an episode of the NBC-TV variety series Washington Square with Ray Bolger, and then on a Kate Smith special that aired on ABC-TV.

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Hail To The Chief…And The ‘Sheriff’

Here is yours truly with Rob Lowe in the “Oval Office”. In a break between scenes, I got a chance to meet Rob in a most unexpected way. I had rented several 1960s era TV cameras to the production as props (you can see them in the post just below this one), and after the scene with Rob was finished, I was talking kind of loud to the helpers moving the cameras, and THEN…

I heard an unmistakable voice say “I hear the voice of the SHEIFF from SQUIDBILLIES! Where are you?” I turned around and sure enough…it was Rob Lowe asking!

“How do you know my voice?” I asked and he said, “I’ve got a son that is 20 and another that is 21 and they watch it all the time and now, so do I!”

How about that! I don’t know who was more pleased to meet…him or me! I’ve always admired his ability and, just from the part’s I’ve seen, he makes a very believable JFK. I thought he was great in ‘West Wing’ and all of the Mike Meyers ‘Austin Powers’ movies and ‘Wayne’s World’.

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Ever See This?

This is an early model of the European made Phillips PC 60. The yellow flag on top is the zoom flag…the wider the shot, the higher the yellow flag. This is to let boom operators and other cameras know each other’s field of vision so they can stay out of the shot. Broadcasters did not like the tiny tally lights or the half visible dome tally because the talent had a hard time seeing them. The European made cameras were made in The Netherlands and in the UK at PYE, which by 1965 was a part of Philips. In the US, only CBS had European made PC 60s, but only 10 or so, as they were the first to place a big order. The other 80+ PC 60s and 70s for CBS came from the Norelco plant in New York. CBC had some European made PC 60s and some NY made 60s and 70s.

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Vladimir Zworykin’s Last Interview: By Steve North

Thanks to CBS Morning News writer Steve North for sending this article he recently wrote for The Huffington Post. Steve’s visit with the legendary Dr. Zworykin actually occurred in 1981 but is revisited here in intimate detail and reveals an interesting personal side. As it turned out, this was his last interview and we thank Steve for sharing this. Enjoy!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-north/vladimir-zworykin_b_2852863.html

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Marconi & Sarnoff

Here is Guglielmo Marconi, the father of wireless communication (right) with David Sarnoff. Sarnoff began as a wireless operator for the Marconi Wireless Company and gained national attention when, for seventy-two hours, he reportedly relayed the names of survivors of the Titanic. This may or may not be true.

David Sarnoff was born to a Jewish family in Uzlyany, a small town in Belarus, to Abraham and Leah Sarnoff. Abraham Sarnoff emigrated to the United States and raised funds to bring the family. Sarnoff spent much of his early childhood in a cheder studying and memorizing the Torah. He immigrated with his mother and three brothers and one sister to New York City in 1900, where he helped support his family by selling newspapers before and after his classes at the Educational Alliance. In 1906 his father became incapacitated by tuberculosis, and at age 15 Sarnoff went to work to support the family. He had planned to pursue a full-time career in the newspaper business, but a chance encounter led to a position as an office boy at the Commercial Cable Company. When his superior refused him unpaid leave for Rosh Hashanah, he joined the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America on September 30, 1906, and started a career of over 60 years in electronic communications.

Over the next 13 years Sarnoff rose from office boy to commercial manager of the company, learning about the technology and the business of electronic communications on the job and in libraries. He also served at Marconi stations on ships and posts on Siasconset, Nantucket and the New York Wanamaker Department Store. In 1911 he installed and operated the wireless equipment on a ship hunting seals off Newfoundland and Labrador, and used the technology to relay the first remote medical diagnosis from the ship’s doctor to a radio operator at Belle Isle with an infected tooth. The following year, he led two other operators at the Wanamaker station in an effort to confirm the fate of the Titanic.

Sarnoff falsely advanced himself both as the sole hero who stayed by his telegraph key for three days to receive information on the Titanic’s survivors and as the prescient prophet of broadcasting who predicted the medium’s rise in 1916.

Regarding the Titanic story, some modern media historians question whether Sarnoff was at the telegraph key at all. As the profile done for the Museum of Broadcast Communications correctly points out,[2] by the time of the Titanic disaster in 1912, Sarnoff was in management, and no longer a telegrapher; plus, the event occurred on a Sunday, when the store would have been closed. Regarding the “radio music box” prediction, the memo he allegedly wrote making that claim has never been found, but Louise Benjamin, the author of the 1993 article which expressed skepticism about it has since back-tracked somewhat. She and the curator of Sarnoff’s papers found a previously mis-filed 1916 memo that did mention Sarnoff and a “radio music box scheme” (the word “scheme” in 1916 usually meant a plan); Benjamin wrote a follow-up article about Sarnoff and the radio music box in 2002.

Over the next two years Sarnoff earned promotions to chief inspector and contracts manager for a company whose revenues swelled after Congress passed legislation mandating continuous staffing of commercial shipboard radio stations. That same year Marconi won a patent suit that gave it the coastal stations of the United Wireless Telegraph Company. Sarnoff also demonstrated the first use of radio on a railroad line, the Lackawanna Railroad Company’s link between Binghamton, New York, and Scranton, Pennsylvania; and permitted and observed Edwin Armstrong’s demonstration of his regenerative receiver at the Marconi station at Belmar, New Jersey. Sarnoff used H. J. Round’s hydrogen arc transmitter to demonstrate the broadcast of music from the New York Wanamaker station.

This demonstration and the AT&T demonstrations in 1915 of long-distance wireless telephony inspired the first of many memos to his superiors on applications of current and future radio technologies. Sometime late in 1915 or in 1916 he proposed to the company’s president, Edward J. Nally, that the company develop a “Radio Music Box” for the “amateur” market of radio enthusiasts. Nally deferred on the proposal because of the expanded volume of business during World War I. Throughout the war years, Sarnoff remained Marconi’s Commercial Manager, including oversight of the company’s factory in Roselle Park, New Jersey.

Unlike many who were involved with early radio communications, viewing radio as point-to-point, Sarnoff saw the potential of radio as point-to-mass. One person (the broadcaster) could speak to many (the listeners).

When Owen D. Young of the General Electric Company arranged the purchase of American Marconi and turned it into the Radio Corporation of America, a radio patent monopoly, Sarnoff realized his dream and revived his proposal in a lengthy memo on the company’s business and prospects. His superiors again ignored him but he contributed to the rising postwar radio boom by helping arrange for the broadcast of a heavyweight boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier in July 1921. Up to 300,000 people heard the fight, and demand for home radio equipment bloomed that winter.

By the spring of 1922 Sarnoff’s prediction of popular demand for broadcasting had come true, and over the next eighteen months, he gained in stature and influence.

In 1926, RCA purchased its first radio station (WEAF, New York) and launched the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the first radio network in America. Four years later, Sarnoff became president of RCA. NBC had by that time split into two networks, the Red and the Blue. The Blue Network later became ABC Radio. Sarnoff was sometimes inaccurately referred to later in his career as the founder of both RCA and NBC, but he was in fact neither.

Sarnoff was instrumental in building and established the AM broadcasting radio business which became the preeminent public radio standard for the majority of the 20th century. This was until FM broadcasting radio re-emerged in the 1960s despite Sarnoff’s efforts to suppress it during the 1930s and 1940s.

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If you notice a marked resemblance to the RCA TK30, there is a reason for that. Although a bit taller than the TK30, it is in many ways the same camera as RCA shared the design with Marconi by selling them the rights to use the design starting with the Mark I. The reason why is in the post above titled “Maroni & Sarnoff”.

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VERY COOL! Patti Page Promo…1958

Patti is behind the camera and on the boom, and more! Enjoy!

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