WML? gets the lead in The NYer's new profile of Gertrude Berg:

[quote] On May 9, 1954, on the set of the CBS game show “What’s My Line?,” the week’s “mystery celebrity” strolled past a panel of blindfolded judges and, to a roar from the studio audience, wrote her name on the chalkboard: Gertrude Berg. A zaftig woman with warm, expressive eyes and a dumpling nose, Berg was dressed with Park Avenue flair, in a regal fur stole and three strands of pearls. Onscreen, a caption displayed the name she was better known by, that of a fictional character who, for a quarter of a century, had been as iconic as Groucho Marx and as beloved as Mickey Mouse: the irresistible, Yiddish-accented, malaprop-prone Bronx housewife Molly Goldberg, hollering “Yoo-hoo, is anybody?” into her tenement airshaft, the social network of its day.

[quote] The past year had been a difficult one for Berg, then fifty-four, whose family show “The Goldbergs”—originally titled “The Rise of the Goldbergs”—débuted in 1929 as a radio serial that bounced between networks before settling on CBS, becoming a national sensation. During the Depression and the Second World War, Berg had beavered away at an astonishing pace, producing, writing, directing, and starring in thousands of episodes about a hardworking Jewish immigrant family. In the process, she’d become a multimedia mogul, with an advice column called “Mama Talks,” a comic strip, a best-selling cookbook, and even a line of housedresses for full-figured women. In a national poll in Good Housekeeping, Berg was ranked America’s second most admired woman, bested only by another liberal firebrand, Eleanor Roosevelt.

[quote] In 1945, Berg’s radio show ended—and four years later she rebooted it as a television sitcom on CBS, during the loosey-goosey early days of the medium, when shows still aired live and were run by advertisers. Working with General Foods, she flacked Sanka decaffeinated coffee in character as Molly, boosting the brand’s sales; in 1951, she won the first Emmy for Best Actress, beating out Imogene Coca, Helen Hayes, and Betty White. Television was about to transform the culture, and Berg was poised to become one of its greatest luminaries.

[quote] Instead, just three years later, her life’s work was in peril. In 1950, as the McCarthy era descended, an ideological cage dropped over the industry, terrorizing a community of liberal-minded creators, among them Philip Loeb, the actor who played Molly’s husband, Jake, on “The Goldbergs.” Loeb had his name printed in “Red Channels,” the notorious anti-Communist snitch book. For a year and a half, Berg fought hard for Loeb, refusing her sponsor’s demands that she fire him, but CBS dropped the show, and in the end she gave in. “The Goldbergs” was now airing on the more marginal DuMont network, with a new sponsor and a new Jake. Another family sitcom had taken Berg’s old Monday-night slot on CBS: “I Love Lucy,” starring Lucille Ball, the First Lady of television.