ABSTRACT
Ethel Rosenberg was not the most famous Jewish woman of the early 1950s, though she came close. That honor must go to Molly Goldberg, the Yiddish-accented immigrant heroine of the long-running hit radio and TV series The Goldbergs. Although a fictional character, Molly was played with such verisimilitude by Gertrude Berg—in fact an American-born middle-class Jew—that the public easily confused the mythical Molly with her real-life impersonator. As we shall see, Berg, who created the character of Molly Goldberg as well as acted it, lived a very different life from that of her character. Yet Molly/Gertrude was powerful in popular culture precisely because she ostensibly represented—and existed in—reality. Molly's character, tied to Gertrude Berg, not only mobilized the cultural power of a historical, “real” person but in some senses, became a real person.
