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. Berg's chronically unstable mother Dinah, grieving over the death of her young son, experienced a series of nervous breakdowns and later died in a sanitarium. Tillie, who lived with her family on
Lexington Avenue, '', in which she played a hotel owner. After a fire burned down the sugar factory where her husband was employed, she worked on a semi-autobiographical skit that she hoped to develop into a radio program. It portrayed a Jewish family in a
Bronx tenement. Though her household had a typewriter, Berg wrote the script by hand, taking the handwritten pages to a long-awaited appointment at
NBC. When the executive she met with protested that he could not read her writing, she read the script aloud to him. Her performance not only sold the idea for the radio program, but also landed her the role as lead actress. She continued to write the scripts in pencil for as long as the program was on the air. On November 20, 1929, a 15-minute episode of
The Rise of the Goldbergs was first broadcast on the NBC radio network. She started at US$75 a week. Less than two years later, in the heart of the
Great Depression, she let the sponsor propose a salary and was told, "Mrs. Berg, we can't pay a cent over $2,000 a week." Berg's husband, Lewis—who became a successful consulting engineer, though his job loss prompted her to write the initial radio script—refused to be photographed with his wife for publicity purposes, as he felt this was infringing on her success. Early episodes portrayed the Goldberg family openly struggling to adapt to American life. Her characters Molly, Jake, Sammy and Rosie lived out the day-to-day stories of Jewish immigrants. In 1951, Berg won the first ever
Emmy Award for Lead Actress in a Television Series in her twentieth year of playing the role. The show would stay in production for five more years.
The Goldbergs ran into political trouble in 1950 during the
McCarthy Era. Co-star
Philip Loeb (Molly's husband, patriarch Jake Goldberg) was one of the performers named in
Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television, which resulted in his being
blacklisted. The program's chief sponsor,
General Foods, insisted that Loeb must be fired. Berg stuck by Loeb and resisted sponsor and network pressure for a year and a half. In January 1952, Loeb resigned rather than cause Berg further problems. Following the Loeb controversy,
The Goldbergs continued on television until 1954, after which Berg also wrote and produced a syndicated film version. The show remained in syndicated reruns for another few years, after one year of production and 39 episodes (it aired on some stations as
Molly). A new version of the series is currently seen on the Jewish Life Television (JLTV) cable network. Berg made guest appearances on television in the 1950s and early 1960s. She appeared on
The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, on a February 1958 episode of
The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford, and was the "mystery guest'" on the series ''
What's My Line? in 1954, 1960, and 1961. In 1961, she made a last stab at television success in the Four Star Television situation comedy, Mrs. G. Goes to College (retitled The Gertrude Berg Show'' at midseason), playing a 62-year-old widow who enrolls in college. The series was cancelled after one season. Berg continued working in theatre through these years. In 1959, she won the
Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance in
A Majority of One. In 1961, she won the
Sarah Siddons Award for her work in
Chicago theater. She also published a best-selling memoir,
Molly and Me, in 1961. In 1965 she released an album,
How to Be a Jewish Mother, on the
Amy Records label. A spoken-word adaptation of humorist
Dan Greenburg's best-selling
1964 book of the same name, the album peaked at No. 131 on the
Billboard Top LPs, during a twelve-week stay on the chart. ==Death and legacy==