QUOTE(nasir @ Apr 13 2007, 09:35 PM)
QUOTE(YaarMere @ Apr 12 2007, 06:35 PM)
Wot on earth did she see in RK that she did not see in DK?
A Million Dollar question YAARMERE....
What indeed she see in him - a much married man while DK was the most eligible bachelor till as late he celebrated his 44th birthday.
This calls for analysis based on their performance together right from 1948 MELA, then 1949 ANDAAZ, JOGAN and BABUL 1950 and DEEDAR 1951, BABUL 1952 where Dilip keeps on losing her. So also in HULCHAL. Much has also to do with AAN 1952.
NASIR.
QUOTE(nasir @ Apr 14 2007, 10:42 PM)
QUOTE(desai2rn @ Apr 14 2007, 03:54 AM)
QUOTE(nasir @ Apr 13 2007, 09:35 PM)
QUOTE(YaarMere @ Apr 12 2007, 06:35 PM)
Wot on earth did she see in RK that she did not see in DK?
A Million Dollar question YAARMERE....
What indeed she see in him - a much married man while DK was the most eligible bachelor till as late he celebrated his 44th birthday.
This calls for analysis based on their performance together right from 1948 MELA, then 1949 ANDAAZ, JOGAN and BABUL 1950 and DEEDAR 1951, BABUL 1952 where Dilip keeps on losing her. So also in HULCHAL. Much has also to do with AAN 1952.
NASIR.
I guess we will never know. As they say love is blind. Other than the fact that Rk was married and DK was
bachelor, they were both powerful personalites. DK it seems could not decide who he wanted to be with.
If I am not wrong he had affairs with Kamini Kaushal (married ??), Madhubala etc. Just when people thougt
he would settle down with Waheeda Rehman ( would have been nice couple) he marries Saira??
The important point to note regarding DK and Nargis is that DK was paired with her as early as 1948. Maybe Nargis was a strong personality. So there was no chemistry at all. When you look at Kamini Kaushal she seems so pliable, so sweet and willing. The chemistry is evident there. Besides a spate of their pictures and all were hit. Regarding the story why he did not settle down with Waheeda it appears it has something to do with a mother who had her own dreams...... maybe. Regarding Madhubala, Dk truly was in love with her. But as Shakespeare says: The course of true love never doth run smooth. Regarding Vyjantimala, her pairing with DK was truly fabulous until RK's SANGAM came along. And there are so many shady stories there it seems.
But the fate willed that DK marry Saira. And what a lovely couple they made. They both deserved each other. Many film personalities could not even digest the thought. (A friend of mine who was in the Baraat did hear some snide remarks from an eminent film personality). But as they say: KOI JAL GAYA AUR KISI NE DUA' DEE.....May this pair bloom for many many years to come.
NASIR.
Nasir Saheb you are very much right here. Nargis was a much stronger personality
than DK at that time. T J S George, who wrote the book "Life and Times of Nargis"
has beautifully analysed her life. It is worth reading.....
COMMERCIAL cinema today puts the accent on commercial, not on cinema. Its star component reflects the general culture. For one thing, body-building is the dominant element in the Net Asset Value of a male lead who, invariably, prefers to go shirtless as often as possible. For another, stars are available on rent to political parties looking for opportunistic propaganda boost and a campaign romp or two. From both artistic and sociological perspectives, it is worth pondering why even an Amitabh Bachchan could achieve only success, not significance. Could it be an inability to see the difference, or a tendency to equate the one with the other? Could it be the absence of a purposeful mission, social or aesthetic, without which success becomes essentially vain-glorious?
The world was different in the 1950s. Idealism energised talent and talent inspired idealism. Technology had not become a substitute for ability. There was no ‘special effects’ department that could make a terminator out of Schwarzenegger, no morphological tricks that could convert a Kamal Hasan into an instant hydra. An actor had to act. It was part of the folk wisdom of the time that dramatic actors like Dilip Kumar and Balraj Sahni, as well as character artistes like Lalita Pawar and Achla Sachdev, would spend hours studying their parts and perfecting the nuances of their performance.
Not surprisingly a thousand flowers bloomed in the years that immediately followed independence. Directors like Bimal Roy and K.A. Abbas pioneered the romantic-neorealist genre of cinema, directly influenced by European masters in general and Vittorio De Sica in particular. Composers like Naushad endowed music with classical dimensions. Lyricists like Sahir Ludhianwi and Shakeel Badayuni were not just film lyricists, but poets of considerable worth. The erratic Kishore Kumar’s simultaneous brilliance in different departments was something of a marvel. For that matter, where has there been a comedian who could rival the versatility and finesse of Johny Walker?
If this sounds like a throwback to the old-is-gold cliche, so be it. The 1950s were indeed a Golden Age, described as such and compared to the Golden Age of the 1930s when New Theatres, Bombay Talkies and Prabhat lit up the skies and filled them with stars of the calibre of Devika Rani and K.L. Saigal. Those decades attained a measure of significance because cinema then recognised its social responsibility. Pictures like Shantaram’s Amrita Manthan (1934), Bombay Talkies’ Acchut Kanya (1936) and Mehboob Khan’s Ek Hi Rasta (1939) found worthy successors in the second Golden Age with Zia Sarhadi’s Humlog (1951), Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin (1953) and Mehboob’s Mother India (1957). A good deal of trash came out of those years, but the thinkers made up for the titillators.
The stars kept pace. On the female side as well as the male. It took a dedicated producer-director-bureaucrat named Mohan Bhavnani to help break the social taboo that kept ‘respectable women’ out of cinema. In Vasant Sena which he produced in 1931, he scored a triumph for which he is yet to be fully recognised; he persuaded the socially prominent Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya and Enakshi Rama Rau to appear before the camera. But that was not enough for him. He wanted an educated lady to take to films as a profession and thereby set an example. This he achieved when Durga Khote, the Cathedral School-educated wife of the upper-crust lawyer Viswas Khote, agreed to star in Bhavnani’s Trapped (1931).
That debut led to an opening of the floodgates. Devika Rani, who had teamed up with Himanshu Rai two years earlier in Germany, became the queen of the first Golden Age not only because of her histrionic capabilities, but also her aristocratic pedigree. She was the daughter of Col. M.N. Chowdury, Surgeon-General, who had sent her off to England at the age of nine in order to bring her up as a proper English lady. Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and later in Germany, she was as educated as anyone could be. She was now joined by a galaxy of stars – Shanta Apte, Leela Chitnis, Shobhana Samarth, Kannanbala, Sadhana Bose. The 1950s saw a lineup just as glittering – Meena Kumari, Madhubala, Kamini Kaushal, Geeta Bali, Waheeda Rahman, Nutan.
And Nargis. How did this progeny of the kothewali class of professional singers transcend her custom-ordained destiny, rise above her extraordinarily gifted fellow artistes, rise even above the aristocratic Devika Rani and become the First Lady of the second Golden Age? K.A. Abbas had noted that she was not a great actress to start with. Yet she became not only ‘the greatest star of our film industry,’ as Balraj Sahni described her, but also an icon of her times with an assured place among the Great Women of India.
Genes certainly had something to do with it, genes and a natural ambition for excellence that grew out of them. Her mother Jaddan Bai, imperious and colourful, was the one who sensed early on that life ought to be more than singing and dancing for the entertainment of northern India’s zamindars. She became so proficient in singing, especially thumri, that when she was on a visit to Calcutta K.L. Saigal listened to her and told friends about the classical character of her music.
Another Punjabi who attended that soiree was smitten by the singer as well as the song. Uttamchand Mohanchand (Mohan Babu) from Rawalpindi was on his way to England to study medicine. He cancelled all plans and persuaded Jaddan Bai, already a mother of two boys, to marry him. From him, daughter Nargis inherited a capacity to both love profoundly and develop a sensitive attachment to books and education. These traits, combined with an ability to dream which she imbibed from her mother, formed the foundations of Nargis’s personality.
It was of course the aesthetic side of that personality that made her a star. But there were other aspects to her life that made her unlike any other star. She made contributions of her own as a woman, as a mother and wife, as a citizen and as a committed social worker. Her multiple involvements gave her a sense of direction which several of her talented contemporaries missed. Waheeda Rahman was one of the few who found fulfilment in her career and went into graceful retirement. Madhubala and Nutan were overtaken by illnesses while Meena Kumari fell prey to excesses with the bottle. Nargis always had worthy causes to pursue. That was why, even though cancer brought her life to a painful end, she filled the 52 years of her life with accomplishments of a lasting kind.
First and foremost she was an artiste. Her appearance in her mother’s production Talashe Haq in 1935 at the age of six may be considered no more than a matter of record. (Her name appeared in the credits as Baby Rani. Among family and close friends she was always known by the pet name of Baby.) At 14 she was dreaming of joining college and becoming a doctor. It took a full day for Mehboob to persuade her to accept the role of heroine in his Taqdeer (1943). Mehboob also gave her a new screen name. She obviously could not be featured as Baby Rani. Nor was her official name, Fatima Abdul Rashid, attractive enough for cinema. Her father had named her Tejeswari Mohan. That too was considered unsuitable. Mehboob finally chose the one-word name
