Review of Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg (2009) by Markm. — 16 Jul 2009

After watching the film a group of friends and I debated at length why we had never heard of Gertrude Berg. Here is our hypothesis. The reason that Gertrude Berg is not remembered -- besides the inability to make a permanent record of her show except for a few kinescopes, is that the history of the 20th century is by and large written by men.

And her show appealed to women in their domestic scope. And judging from some of the ugly comments made on your site about her appearance the judgment by the male run networks and critics was that because she was not beautiful in the anorexic image seen on TV (Donna Reed, Lucy, Alice in The Honeymooners were damn skinny) and therefore she was not worthy of discussion.

She made men uncomfortable. So does Oprah. So does Roseanne. Your review is right in that the film doesn't delve in to the reasons she wasn't remembered. The reasons are all about religious and sexual bias of the male controlled media.

She was too Jewish, too old and too fat to be worthy of her tremendous accomplishments being recorded and recognized for posterity. She reminded men in power of their immigrant mothers who sacrificed for them.

It wasn't cool. Thank goodness Aviva Kempner is finding a way to make sure she is not forgotten for her achievements. The narrow scope of beauty that the media seems to recognize is one reason why Gertrude Berg has been stricken from the record of cultural history.

I think C plus is way too low a grade for this doc.