Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

There was a time when there was less shame about being an immigrant in America, when the entire city of New York, south of midtown, spoke with an accent, and not just one. There were gang fights among the ruffians, there were hazings, there were clan feuds over romances and marriages. It wasn't some golden era, but it was part of our history, just as the new waves of immigrants are part of our history now.

Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, is a delightful yet provocative film about the enormously ambitious and talented Gertrude Berg, the writer, director and actor of the long-running radio then television (there's a film in there, too) series starring the fictious character of Molly Goldberg, an Eastern European Jewish immigrant and her family living in New York City.

Arlene and I shared the empty theater with an older Jewish couple. We gave each other permission to laugh and be raucous, and we were.

However, the story includes the Black list period, when progressive actors were banned from the screen and radio by gossip and hysteria over "Red" infilitration. And the film deals with the pressures placed on Gertrude Berg to fire her stage husband Jake played by Philip Loeb, an activist who fought for pay and benefits through the nascent Actors Equity Union.

Gertrude Berg was a feminist before it had a name, and the interviews with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginzburg, Susan Stanberg, and various relatives of Ms. Berg add much to an understanding of just how a woman insisted that she have a career, that she control her artistic dream, and that her dream became a part of America at a time when Nazis were rising to power in Europe and anti-semitism was rising here, too.

It's a taste of how situation comedies began, it's a glimpse into what made Lucille Ball so famous, it's a repose to a time when we thought we were less xenophobic, but maybe we weren't. We just don't want to admit that we were. The film is by Aviva Kempner and it's a gem.