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| The Cantor's Son |
Described as a sort of anti-
The Jazz Singer,
The Cantor's Son marks the screen debut of the celebrated cantor and matinee idol Moishe Oysher, whose splendid voice is heard throughout.
This free-spirited musical tells the story of a wayward youth who makes his way from his Polish
shtetl to New York's Lower East Side, where he eventually achieves success and happiness by keeping one foot in the New World and another in the Old.
Featuring rare glimpses of the Lower East Side and of 2nd Avenue Yiddish theatre marquees of the period, the film loosely parallels Oysher's struggle to reconcile his cantorial calling (he was the son and grandson of cantors) with a career in show business.
During the film's production, director Sidney M. Goldin (
Uncle Moses,
East and West) suffered a fatal heart attack and was succeeded by Stanislavsky protégé Ilya Motlyeff. The film's score was composed by Alexander Olshanetsky, a concert violinist and veteran of the Yiddish theatre, and includes his now famous hymn,
Mayn Shtetle Belz.
