Molly Goldberg, with her malapropisms,
cadence and unique syntax, offers a comical approach to family life in
the 1950’s. Berg tells Morris Freedman in
1954 that “you’ll notice there’s no dialect,
just intonation and word order. A question at the
end of a statement, ‘So you are coming already?’ Sometimes it’s a
matter of literally translating a Yiddish idiom, like ‘Throw an eye in
the refrigerator.’ “(Freedman, 1954, p.360). “If
it’s nobody, I’ll call back” or “Give me a swallow, the glass.”
(Hinckley, 2002) She herself is not an immigrant but in order to
maintain the accuracy of her dialogues she frequently visits the lower
East Side in New York and listens to the conversations of the shoppers
and peddlers.
MOTHERHOOD
With all of her faults, the lovable Molly
Goldberg is the representation of the shtetl
mother in America and the Demeter woman, the mother archetype who
provides and gives and takes care of others. “Molly Goldberg possesses
many of the traits that are traditionally associated with the Jewish
Mother: being warm, motherly, resourceful, nurturing and problem-solving
and on the flip side of this picture, being overbearing and
inescapable.” (Pearl, 1999, p. 86) She
represents a large-spirited woman, who, regardless of her obvious
Jewishness, is attuned to the problems of
all mankind and definitely wants to help resolve the issues. According
to Charles Angoff, Molly is “the Mixer and
the Fixer….whose heart bleeds for every unmarried girl and starving
butcher and lonely grocer and who is as quick as the proverbial
lightening in concocting ideas to get the ‘right’ girl and ‘right’ man
together, to straighten out family squabbles, to help out a reformed
thief.” (Angoff, 1951,
pp. 12-13) And she goes about solving these problems with obvious
cleverness, humorous self-deprecation, devoted commitment, determination
and most of all prodigious strength.
FAMILY
From
its inception, according to Lynn Spigel,
people believe that television will bring families closer together
because the children will want to stay at home and watch TV with their
parents. It is going to be an activity that everyone can share. And
there is growing concern in the 1950s that
the “American” family values are increasingly being dissipated by
diversity within the society.
What is a better vehicle for the
promulgation of old-fashioned family values than The
Goldbergs? This show and other fifties
TV families are a “surrogate community. Television provided an illusion
of the ideal neighborhood-the way it was
supposed to be. Just when people had left their lifelong companions in
the city, television sitcoms pictured romanticized versions of
neighbor and family bonding. Mrs. Goldberg
leaned out of her window to greet her neighbor,
Mrs. Bloom.” (Spigel, 1992, p. 129)
According to Joyce Antler, middle-class
American life is depicted in the neighborliness,
the giving and taking of advice and the borrowing of a cup of sugar. The
notion of a neighborhood is deliberately
emphasized in the opening of the show which is an outside shot of the
Bronxville apartment at 1038 E. Tremont Avenue with Molly leaning out of
the window yelling, “Yoohoo, Mrs. Bloom” or
convincing her audience that Sanka is the
best possible beverage for everyone. The impression is that we are
having an intimate conversation with a trusted
neighbor. When the program moves in 1954 to
Haverville, a fictitious suburban community, the camera spans the
neighborhood at the beginning of every show.
Whether in a New York tenement house or a spacious suburb, Molly is
always your faithful and reliable friend. Also, inherent in the message
is that even though a family has moved to the suburbs it’s still
possible to have good neighbors and be a
cohesive family. This is a deliberate and reassuring message for a
recently mobile populace anxious about the advantages of moving to the
suburbs and breaking ties with extended family members.
Everyone can identify with the fighting
and jealousies experienced by not only the nuclear Goldberg family but
the assortment of extended family relatives. The gossip and peccadilloes
of people are weekly ingredients for Berg’s show. In
a 1949 episode, the miserly and rich
Cousin Simon thinks he’s had a heart attack and decides to give his
money to his poor relations; but as soon as he gets well, he decides not
to give the money after all. Molly wisely proclaims, “Maybe there’s a
Simon in every family and a little bit of Simon in everyone, waiting too
long to do what he should.” |