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The "modern" mother in this modest melodrama released by Columbia was played by Helene Chadwick, a minor screen vamp of the later silent era. Chadwick played Adele Dayton, a Broadway star whose daughter, Mildred (Barbara Kent), is reared in rural Massachusetts by Maizie and John (Ethel Grey Terry and Alan Roscoe). Adele often visits but is prohibited from telling Mildred the truth of her parentage. On one such visit, Adele becomes infatuated with Mildred's handsome boyfriend, struggling playwright David Starke (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), who she brings to New York. On opening night of David's new play, Mildred blithely walks in on a romantic embrace between Adele and David and is both shocked and hurt. Realizing she is ruining her daughter's happiness, Adele sacrifices her own love by suddenly acting cold and indifferent toward the young man who soon returns, older but wiser, to Mildred. A dreary potboiler, Modern Mothers was written by Peter Milne, a former film reviewer who should have known better.