Mothers of Today

Mothers of Today includes the sole motion picture performance of radio star Esther Field, who was well known on the airwaves of the 1930s as the 'Yiddishe Mama.' The film exemplifies the Yiddish film genre of shund, a brand of popular entertainment which appealed to working-class Jewish-American immigrant audiences with broadly-drawn, sentimental stories that reflected the daily life and culture of a distinctively American Yiddish community. While the shund films were invariably low-budget (and low-brow) affairs, these humble productions formed an important part of life in the United States for their audience. For actresses such as Field or Celia Adler (star of Where is My Child?, also directed by Lynn in 1939), shund offered one of the few opportunities to play strong leading roles. In retrospect, Mothers of Today is an important cultural artifact expressing the anxieties of Jewish immigrant families faced with the younger generation's increasing assimilation into mainstream American...