Motel the Operator
Synopsis
Motel, a poor laborer, loving husband and new father, leads cloakmakers in a strike for better working conditions. When he is severely injured by strikebreakers, his wife, Esther, and infant son are left destitute. Desperate to save her starving child, Esther gives him up for adoption to a wealthy couple, and then commits suicide. The richly-rendered beautiful Yiddish songs by Sholem Secunda featuring Cantor Leibele Waldman and Joel Feig's famous choir are a good example of the bittersweet melodrama in the finest tradition of the Yiddish theater.
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How many hands made this film
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Principal cast & crew: 15
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
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This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Shot by Charles LevineScored by Sholom SecundaDesigned by F Allstadt
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Cast & Crew
15 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Chaim Tauber
as Motel Friedman
Seymour Rechzeit
as Jacob 'Jack' Rosenwald
Yetta Zwerling
as Chane Belle 'Annabella' Frumkin
Jacob Zanger
as Jacob 'Joseph' Frumkin
Maurice Krohner
as Benjamin Rosenwald
Izidor Frankel
as The Boss
Berthe Hart
as Rebecca Rosenwald
Gertrude Krause
as Ruth Frumkin
Malvina Rappel
as Esta Friedman
Herman Rosen
Directors
1Writers
1Producers
1Other crew
4Parents Guide
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