On May 9, 1954, on the set of the CBS game show “What’s My Line?,” the week’s “mystery celebrity” strolled past a panel of blindfolded judges and, to a roar from the studio audience, wrote her name on the chalkboard: Gertrude Berg. A zaftig woman with warm, expressive eyes and a dumpling nose, Berg was dressed with Park Avenue flair, in a regal fur stole and three strands of pearls. Onscreen, a caption displayed the name she was better known by, that of a fictional character who, for a quarter of a century, had been as iconic as Groucho Marx and as beloved as Mickey Mouse: the irresistible, Yiddish-accented, malaprop-prone Bronx housewife Molly Goldberg, hollering “Yoo-hoo, is anybody?” into her tenement airshaft, the social network of its day.
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