Summary
Sonya Levien’s scenario unfurls inside a Lower-East-Side kaleidoscope where herring barrels gossip with pushcarts and gaslight drips like molten amber over tenement stoops. Carmel Myers incarnates Sonya, a Bessarabian sapling transplanted to asphalt, her father’s claustrophobic grocery a cramped proscenium for dreams that refuse the confines of shelves. Allan Forrest’s David—sober-suited settlement-house Paladin—hovers with Anglo-Saxon constancy, yet her pulse is tuned to Mischa, the Odessa doctor whose stethoscope once kissed the ribs of pogrom orphans. To bankroll his stateside license she flings herself into the Yiddish Art Theater’s maelstrom, learning that applause is a currency more volatile than rubles. Enter Yazurka, a Polish panther in silk plumage, whose jealousy sharpens like a guillotine; the coveted role evaporates, leaving Sonya clutching the frayed hem of her own silhouette. On the night the boiler erupts—its iron lungs coughing flames into the flies—the auditorium becomes a synagogue of panic. Sonya, still in greasepaint, strides through smoke like Esther before Ahasuerus, her contralto slicing terror until 400 strangers breathe as one. David, witness to this secular transfiguration, carries her out through ember-flecked darkness; the curtain falls on a kiss that tastes of soot and second chances.
Synopsis
Sonya (Carmel Myers) arrives as immigrant to the United States and works in her father's ghetto grocery store, where she gains the affections of a young settlement worker, David Dahlman (Allan Forrest). But she loves Mischa, a young doctor who soon arrives from Odessa, and to aid him financially, she distinguishes herself in the local Yiddish theater. Mischa turns her down for a wealthy heiress, however, and owing to the jealousy of Yazurka, a prominent Polish actress, Sonya is refused an important role. During a performance, attended by David, there is a boiler explosion that causes panic in the theater, and Sonya comes from backstage and calms the crowd. Later, rescued by David, she accepts his love.
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