Those of a certain age fondly remember Molly Goldberg and family. But in pre-politically correct and –personal computer days, we had no full idea what a mensch she -- and creator/incarnator Gertrude Berg -- was. That term means an honorable being to be reckoned with, and before current Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, it was applied by the interviewed son of Hank Greenberg, the Jewish baseball Hall of Famer of The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, director/producer Aviva Kempner’s 2000 screen biography.

Technique is nothing fancy in this straightforward chronological account narrated with photographs, newsreel and footage from immigrant-themed films and pioneering television shows, sprinkled with color interviews with grandchildren, surviving friends and associates, actors and fans.

On the one hand, this is the story of Tilly, the East Harlem-raised daughter of financially unstable Jacob Edelstein, who at eighteen married English-born Lewis Berg and, days after Black Tuesday, 1929, wrote, produced and starred in NBC radio’s hit family comedy, (The Rise of) The Goldbergs. Rivaled only by Amos ‘n’ Andy, the show transitioned to the infant small screen twenty years afterwards and was enormously popular as television’s first sitcom.

The simply but expensively dressed Tilly who became Gertrude did not speak Yiddish but could switch into her Molly’s accent at Edward R. Murrow’s Person to Person request. She was a well-spoken adroit businesswoman, sales pitchman, columnist and author of advice for living as well as for cooking, winner of the very first Best Actress Emmy, a mid-century Oprah equal in popularity to her idol, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Implicit in this aspect of the consideration is the nostalgia which makes it a niche film. That post-Depression/–World War, pre-Vietnam War country was optimistic and innocent, unsuspicious and tolerant enough that, addressed years later by a colleague as “Goldberg,” Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recalls not correcting the mistake. The film indicates that the inflected malapropisms and Old World goodness of the Bronx apartment-dwelling television neighbors were embraced by Middle America, too, in warm fuzzy national unity, belief in Progress, and smug self-satisfaction. Fourteen thousand scripts were written by Gertrude, typed by supportive Lewis from her crabbed handwriting, and broadcast the Melting Pot idea. Her critical, popular and financial success epitomized the American Dream.

There is ironic contrast in that, for a number of reasons, the fictional Goldbergs lived out that same Dream in a subsequent move to suburbia, which took the life-force from them and spelled the demise of the show, to give 1951 pride of place to an incipient I Love Lucy.

Too saccharine, the modern commentators in the film offer little true insight. Herein lies the darker side of the coin, introduced late and in disconnected pieces. Listen carefully to the brief suggestions that, beneath schmaltzy chicken soup wisdom and real-world business acumen, Gertrude Edelstein Berg had a difficult side, insisted on her way, and kept her inner self from scrutiny, and that her young brother’s death and their mother’s slide into madness, shaped her more than anyone knew.

Developed a little more but still not integrated or followed up on, is the HUAC-Red Channels paranoia and pressure on the program’s sponsor. The target was liberal union activist Philip Loeb, Molly’s TV husband Jacob/“Jake,” and it is argued that it was witch-hunt persecution that drove him to the suicide recreated by Zero Mostel (with whom Loeb lived) as Hecky Brown in The Front. Even after the blacklisted actor was replaced, Gertrude supported him, which was to have repercussions for the show.

Berg would go on to some success on Broadway but seems personally lost after radio and television. She died forty-three years ago and is unknown to recent generations, who will probably prove almost impossible to interest in the woman or her times. Those who lived them, though, will again get a warm glow for the linked personalities, the programs and the era.

(Released by International Film Circuit; not rated by MPAA.)