Charles E. Davenport

This 1919 silent is the first American film based on the same Sholem Aleichem stories as Fiddler on the Roof, but produced 50 years before the blockbuster musical. Unlike most adaptations of Aleichem’s work, Broken Barriers (Khavah) focuses not on Tevye the milkman, but on his daughter Khavah, who falls in love with the gentile boy Fedka and must navigate the reverberations from this with both her community and her family.

Honest Fordyce Manville newly elected Governor of New York refuses to appoint a man chosen by party leader Boss Tally to a prominent position having authority over a large amount of state funds. Tally threatens revenge and persuades his son Archie to break his engagement to Manville's daughter Ruth. Tally and his gang work out a plan to frame the governor but a clerk in Tally's office, who is Ruth's friend, informs her of the plot. Ruth and her friend manage to record the boss and his aides conspiring. Tally rushes the trial causing Ruth to arrive too late to stop the governor from being impeached on the first ballot, but justice wins out in the end.

Brakeman Jack Foster is the hero of the story. A happily married father of two, his lack of caution while following his dangerous calling is a constant source of worry to his wife and to his close friend conductor Jim Stevens. Jim trying to point out the risks Jack is continually running tells him stories about what leads to a wreck, how the brakeman lost his leg, another man an eye, and how a third man was knocked from the roof of a boxcar when making a coupling. Lesson learned Jack becomes a model of caution and efficiency.