Jennie Goldstein (c. 1897-1960) was once known as the "Ethel Barrymore of Second Avenue."

Many theatre-goers in the 1920s and 1930s packed the Yiddish theatre to see Jennie Goldstein, who often played tragic roles. At the peak of her career, a Yiddish newspaper critic said of her, "Nobody can make you cry like Jennie Goldstein."

At the age of fifteen, her father, a poor butcher supporting a wife and six kids, agreed to let Jennie act. She then received her first starring role, and at the tender age of eighteen she managed a small playhouse on the Bowery.

When she was young, she played self-sacrificing wives, daughters and sweethearts; as she got older, she played self-sacrificing mothers.