The Cantor's Son - Dem Khazns Zindl

Feature. 90 min., B&W, Yiddish with English subtitles.
Directed by Ilya Motyleff (& Sidney Goldin, uncredited)
This Yiddish feature film musical drama marks the screen debut of singer and cantor Moishe Oysher. Shot in Pennsylvania near the Pocono Mountains, the film features Oysher in the title role of a wayward youth who makes his way from his Polish shtetl to New York's Lower East Side (the film includes rare glimpses of the Lower East Side and of 2nd Avenue Yiddish theater marquees of the period). While washing floors in a nightclub several years later he is “discovered” and becomes a well-known singer. Ultimately, Oysher's character returns home to the Old Country and reunites with his parents and his childhood sweetheart.

Excerpt from the film featuring Oysher with real life wife Florence Weiss singing Mayn Shtetele Belz: