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Celebrated Yiddish-theatre luminary Maurice Schwartz was both star and director of Broken Hearts. Schwartz plays Benjamin Rezanov, a Jewish author forced to leave his wife behind when he flees the pogroms and persecution of Czarist Russia. Immediately upon arriving in New York, he receives word that his wife has died. After an appropriate period of mourning, he marries a rabbi's daughter, and all goes well until he discovers that his first wife is still alive. He dutifully heads back to Russia, only to be told that he's too late: his wife has expired in a Soviet hospital. After digesting all this, Benjamin comes back to New York, hoping to patch things up with wife number two -- which he does, conveniently in time to celebrate Yom Kippur. With the exception of leading lady Lila Lee, every cast member in Broken Hearts was recruited from New York's Yiddish theater talent pool.