Magazine writer Schuyler 'Phil' Green, a widower who has just arrived with his mother and young son in New York, is assigned the task of writing an expose of anti-Semitism. As he searches for a new angle on the topic, he decides to pass as a Jew for several months, which causes no end of trouble for his ailing mother and young son. This film puts the 'gentleman's agreement' among gentiles to discriminate against Jews directly in the spotlight.

The migration of the Joad family to California from their dust-bowl farm in Oklahoma during the Great Depression.