15 Facts About Gertrude Berg

Gertrude Berg was born Tillie Edelstein in 1899 in the East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, to Jacob and Dinah Edelstein, natives of Russia and England, respectively.

Gertrude Berg learned theater while producing skits at her father's Catskills Mountains resort in Fleischmanns, New York.

Gertrude Berg continued to write the show's scripts by hand in pencil for as long as the program was on the air.

Gertrude Berg became inextricably identified as Molly Goldberg, the big-hearted matriarch of her fictional Bronx family who moved to Connecticut as a symbol of upward mobility of American Jews.

Gertrude Berg wrote nearly all the show's radio episodes plus a Broadway adaptation, Me and Molly.

Just as Gertrude Berg stated in her autobiography, she chose to depict her Jewish grandfather's worship in her first radio broadcast show.

In 1951, Gertrude Berg won the first ever Emmy Award for Lead Actress in a Television Series in her twentieth year of playing the role.

Gertrude Berg reportedly received a generous severance package from the show, but it did not prevent him from sinking into a depression that ultimately drove him to suicide in 1955.

The Goldbergs returned a year after Loeb departed the show and continued until 1954, after which Gertrude Berg wrote and produced a syndicated film version.

Gertrude Berg continued to make guest appearances on television in the 1950s and early 1960s.

In 1961, Berg made a last stab at television success in the Four Star Television situation comedy, Mrs G Goes to College, playing a 62-year-old widow who enrolls in college.

In 1961, Gertrude Berg won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theater.

Gertrude Berg published a best-selling memoir, Molly and Me, in 1961.

Gertrude Berg died of heart failure on September 14,1966, aged 66, at Doctors Hospital in Manhattan.

Gertrude Berg is buried at Clovesville Cemetery in Fleischmanns, New York.