I though it fit to say some words about Pramila, who died some weeks ago, because she happened to be my friend, Haider Ali's mother.
Pramila, the first Miss India (1947) was a prominent actress of the Thirties. She acted in about thirty movies, including Jhankar, Shahzadi, Jungle King, Our Daring Daughter and Bhikarin among others. Some of her co-stars included the likes of Jayant and Jairaj. She was the wife of late Sayyad Hassan Ali Zaidi who was himself an actor of renown whom the younger generations have only seen in character roles such as that of a Sang Tarash in Mughal-e-Azam.
May her Soul and that of her husband Kumar rest in eternal peace.
NASIR.
p.s. In case this friend of mine is wondering who am I, here's the reintroduction:
Haider Ali who is currently a Story Writer and Actor was my class-mate in Belvedere Convent at Cadell Road, Mahim, Bombay. I remember him and his brother, Azghar Ali, taking parts in many of the school functions. One such function was when the latter along with another performed the record dance of : MERA NAAM ABDUL REHMAN, PISHTA WAALA MAIN HOON PATHAAN.....I had also an opportunity visit their home near the Paradise Cinema then.
The last time I met Haider Ali at the St. Michael High School, Mahim.
I hope he remembers me.
Full Version: Pramila, The Beautiful Actress Of Thirties.
that's sad news
any photograph of hers
any photograph of hers
QUOTE(ashish2345 @ Aug 26 2006, 11:44 PM) 
that's sad news
any photograph of hers
Esther Victoria Abraham aka Pramila
Muhesh Kumar Sharma had sometimes back posted a video song
from Basant 1942 picturised on Pramila and Ulhas. The song was:
huaa kyaa qusuur jo ham se ho duur
If you want more details, go to rmim and check the thread there.
urzung khan
AND Urzung Saheb had posted her interview wherein she described how
her skirt was getting shorter day by day during the shooting of a film.
Sad news.
her skirt was getting shorter day by day during the shooting of a film.
Sad news.
QUOTE(maheshks @ Aug 27 2006, 03:48 AM)
AND Urzung Saheb had posted her interview wherein she described how
her skirt was getting shorter day by day during the shooting of a film.
Sad news.
Pramila ki chhoTi behan bhi filmstar thi. Filmi naam
Uramila tha. Anybody got any news about her ?
thanx Urzungji and Maheshji
ashish
ashish
‘Call me Mother India’
From the SPARROW archives, a profile of Pramila, one of the first Indian actresses to invite the wrath of the censor board in India
She might have been a star of yesteryears but when eighty-two year old Pramila walked into our SPARROW workshop (1997), she could have been the young long-legged actress stepping into the Imperial studio. With her tall stature and erect bearing, her poise and confidence, her animated talk and expressive eyes it was not difficult to imagine this woman as a vivacious beauty and charming actress.
Pramila, nee Esther Victoria Abraham, recreated the movie world of the thirties for us, crowded with the famous and the not-so-famous stars, producers, directors. We also had a glimpse of her earlier years in Calcutta, her Jewish background, her relationship with her paternal grandmother, Esther Shamma, who had married a Hindu, but who held on to her Jewish identity, who had looked and lived like a glamour queen.
A contemporary of Durga Khote, Devika Rani and Leela Chitnis, Pramila was lesser known, probably because she was rarely cast in the heroine’s role. Her ‘western’ appearance and her rather anglicised Hindi often typecast her as the vamp but she stole the heroine’s thunder just as often. With great glee she told us that she was ‘dangerous’ in the second lead role. On the sets of Kanchan, for instance, with Leela Chitnis and Arun Kumar (actor Govinda’s father) in the stellar roles, Pramila seemed to pose a threat off-screen as she did on-screen. The story goes that Leela Chitnis suggested the screen convention of juxtaposing Pramila with a cat to accentuate her vampishness. But the plan boomeranged because Manubhai, the cameraman, would take a close-up of the cat’s eyes and then pan on to Pramila’s, thereby enhancing the beauty of her eyes as well as capturing her feline grace. “Where was she going to stand next to me with a character like that?” was Pramila’s triumphant recall.
Pramila’s relationship and subsequent marriage with actor Kumar (the first of the many screen Kumars) seemed straight out of a cinematic love story, “a huge romance” as she called it. “For thirty-two years all we did was romance.” But partition, which caused such tragic separations in so many lives, was to affect their lives as well. Syed Hasan Ali decided to migrate with his first family to Pakistan but Pramila felt she was too rooted here. “I was in a dazed condition, I did not know what to do.” They had acted in films together; they had made films together, she was now bereft. Yet, when asked if she were to re-live her life, would she want it different, her old spirit seemed to return: “I don’t think anything would be changed at all.”
Once an actress, always an actress. Whether she was redramatising a scene from one of her films or recounting adventures and misadventures during location shooting, or narrating encounters with directors, producers, censors, Pramila’s animation would be transmitted so palpably – every word, look, gesture had a story to tell. There was this time when on the sets of Bijlee, Pramila found that her tight-fitting velvet costume seemed to be getting tighter and shorter at every shoot. The director feigned ignorance and the dresswalla explained ingeniously that it was the rainy weather; it shrank the costume. Pramila decided to take the costume home with her “and it did not shrink anymore!”
Then there was the time when the Wadia Movietone unit of Jungle King was shooting a swimming scene and Pramila found herself caught in a whirlpool. Her frantic gestures for help were mistaken by the camera crew for authentic acting. “Kya scene tha!” was the congratulating cry she heard when, luckily, she was hurled onto the bank to safety.
With the kind of roles she played, Pramila could not but be in constant trouble with the censors; “my first headache” was what Mr Keskar of the censor board called her, when he had been debating to cut or not to cut a scene in the original Mother India where Pramila in a red swimming costume counter-posed as the Anglicised Other to Sharifa’s role of Mother India. But a still greater headache (a mutual one) was Pramila’s 1953 encounter with Morarji Desai, that Censor of all Censors. There was this particular scene in Dhoon to which he objected because Pramila’s pallav had fallen off her shoulders. “I explained to Morarji that such ‘accidents’ could happen. No Indian woman would let the pallav remain fallen; she will instinctively re-drape it over her shoulders.” Even as this actress – to the manner born – as it were, re-enacted this scene, we could imagine her demurely pleading, bending that unbending man to her will.
In more recent years, when all the Miss Indias had gathered together, Pramila, the very first Miss India, told a reporter proudly, “Call me Mother India”. She was referring to Ardeshir Irani’s Mother India of which she had been such a vital part.
And then there was the time… So many stories, so many memories. Her life and her times, the Bombay of the thirties, the world of Hindi cinema, all these unwind themselves like a film-reel, films which were her very life. Some day, Pramila could make, Truffaut-like, a film of this much-loved film world.
In our own modest way, SPARROW has captured this fascinating woman on film. It is a treasured piece of history.
Roshan G Shahani is Trustee of SPARROW and (Retd) head of the English department of Jai Hind College, Mumbai
Her photograph taken in the year 1997.
Click to view attachment
From the SPARROW archives, a profile of Pramila, one of the first Indian actresses to invite the wrath of the censor board in India
She might have been a star of yesteryears but when eighty-two year old Pramila walked into our SPARROW workshop (1997), she could have been the young long-legged actress stepping into the Imperial studio. With her tall stature and erect bearing, her poise and confidence, her animated talk and expressive eyes it was not difficult to imagine this woman as a vivacious beauty and charming actress.
Pramila, nee Esther Victoria Abraham, recreated the movie world of the thirties for us, crowded with the famous and the not-so-famous stars, producers, directors. We also had a glimpse of her earlier years in Calcutta, her Jewish background, her relationship with her paternal grandmother, Esther Shamma, who had married a Hindu, but who held on to her Jewish identity, who had looked and lived like a glamour queen.
A contemporary of Durga Khote, Devika Rani and Leela Chitnis, Pramila was lesser known, probably because she was rarely cast in the heroine’s role. Her ‘western’ appearance and her rather anglicised Hindi often typecast her as the vamp but she stole the heroine’s thunder just as often. With great glee she told us that she was ‘dangerous’ in the second lead role. On the sets of Kanchan, for instance, with Leela Chitnis and Arun Kumar (actor Govinda’s father) in the stellar roles, Pramila seemed to pose a threat off-screen as she did on-screen. The story goes that Leela Chitnis suggested the screen convention of juxtaposing Pramila with a cat to accentuate her vampishness. But the plan boomeranged because Manubhai, the cameraman, would take a close-up of the cat’s eyes and then pan on to Pramila’s, thereby enhancing the beauty of her eyes as well as capturing her feline grace. “Where was she going to stand next to me with a character like that?” was Pramila’s triumphant recall.
Pramila’s relationship and subsequent marriage with actor Kumar (the first of the many screen Kumars) seemed straight out of a cinematic love story, “a huge romance” as she called it. “For thirty-two years all we did was romance.” But partition, which caused such tragic separations in so many lives, was to affect their lives as well. Syed Hasan Ali decided to migrate with his first family to Pakistan but Pramila felt she was too rooted here. “I was in a dazed condition, I did not know what to do.” They had acted in films together; they had made films together, she was now bereft. Yet, when asked if she were to re-live her life, would she want it different, her old spirit seemed to return: “I don’t think anything would be changed at all.”
Once an actress, always an actress. Whether she was redramatising a scene from one of her films or recounting adventures and misadventures during location shooting, or narrating encounters with directors, producers, censors, Pramila’s animation would be transmitted so palpably – every word, look, gesture had a story to tell. There was this time when on the sets of Bijlee, Pramila found that her tight-fitting velvet costume seemed to be getting tighter and shorter at every shoot. The director feigned ignorance and the dresswalla explained ingeniously that it was the rainy weather; it shrank the costume. Pramila decided to take the costume home with her “and it did not shrink anymore!”
Then there was the time when the Wadia Movietone unit of Jungle King was shooting a swimming scene and Pramila found herself caught in a whirlpool. Her frantic gestures for help were mistaken by the camera crew for authentic acting. “Kya scene tha!” was the congratulating cry she heard when, luckily, she was hurled onto the bank to safety.
With the kind of roles she played, Pramila could not but be in constant trouble with the censors; “my first headache” was what Mr Keskar of the censor board called her, when he had been debating to cut or not to cut a scene in the original Mother India where Pramila in a red swimming costume counter-posed as the Anglicised Other to Sharifa’s role of Mother India. But a still greater headache (a mutual one) was Pramila’s 1953 encounter with Morarji Desai, that Censor of all Censors. There was this particular scene in Dhoon to which he objected because Pramila’s pallav had fallen off her shoulders. “I explained to Morarji that such ‘accidents’ could happen. No Indian woman would let the pallav remain fallen; she will instinctively re-drape it over her shoulders.” Even as this actress – to the manner born – as it were, re-enacted this scene, we could imagine her demurely pleading, bending that unbending man to her will.
In more recent years, when all the Miss Indias had gathered together, Pramila, the very first Miss India, told a reporter proudly, “Call me Mother India”. She was referring to Ardeshir Irani’s Mother India of which she had been such a vital part.
And then there was the time… So many stories, so many memories. Her life and her times, the Bombay of the thirties, the world of Hindi cinema, all these unwind themselves like a film-reel, films which were her very life. Some day, Pramila could make, Truffaut-like, a film of this much-loved film world.
In our own modest way, SPARROW has captured this fascinating woman on film. It is a treasured piece of history.
Roshan G Shahani is Trustee of SPARROW and (Retd) head of the English department of Jai Hind College, Mumbai
Her photograph taken in the year 1997.
Click to view attachment
Meet Pramila, the first Miss India
August 28, 2006
The saga of independent India's first-ever beauty queen came to a close on August 6, when Esther Abraham, screen name Pramila, faded into an eternal dissolve.
A born rebel, she walked out of her conservative Baghdadi Jewish home in Kolkata at 17 to join a theatre company. She went on to realise her real dream and blazed across the Indian screen as a vamp and a fearless stunt star in 30 films, including Ulti Ganga, Bijli, Basant and Jungle King. She became the first major woman film producer, with 16 films under her Silver Productions banner.
D N Madhok wrote Choli Ke Andar lyrics for her years before Madhuri Dixit was born and then Bombay chief minister Morarji Desai had her wrongly arrested as a Pakistani spy because of her visits to that country to distribute films.
In a big bad man's world, she wore the pants and led an interesting personal life. As a teenager, she eloped with Marwari theatre director Manicklal Dangi. She later married actor Kumar (who appeared in Mughal-e-Azam and Shri 420) before settling down to live with Parsi filmmaker Nari Gadhali for four decades after Kumar migrated to Pakistan in 1963.
In those four decades, she shunned the limelight, brought up her four sons and a daughter and waged a colossal battle get back her property in Mumbai's Shivaji Park area from the clutches of creditors and authorities.
Her youngest son actor Hyder Ali of television series Nukkad-fame pays a very personal tribute here:
My ma may be known for dash and feisty spirit but it did not come up only when she was cornered. It was her trait. It appeared in everything she did.
I asked her what is was about her that Amol Palekar wanted her to act in his Marathi film, Thang, at 90. How do you manage to be the centre of attraction even now, I asked her.
She said, 'Haidoo, you have to command what you want. If you do not get it, demand it. If you still don't get it, grab it. If you still do not get it you to kill to get it. If you worry about what the world thinks, you will waver from your goal.'
She was like that. She never cared too hoots if the world was shocked, embarrassed... right from the day she walked out of her house.
She hurt people in the process but she was able to compensate because she succeeded financially. She never took from people, she only gave. Throughout, she remained economically independent and died as a landlady.
Charting your own independent path was easier said than done. When she wanted to emulate the success of her cousin in Bollywood as a Kolkata teenager, she joined a Parsi travelling theatre company.
Her job was to keep the audiences quiet with her charms during the 15 minutes it took to change reels in the single-projector silent film. You can imagine the courage and conviction it took for someone, who had been a kindergarden headmistress and had pre-university art certificates from London.
Her orthodox father clobbered her for that but she did not care.
Her spirit showed again when our father left for Pakistan, leaving us in debt. Our family building had been mortgaged for Rs 1 lakh (easily equivalent to crores of rupees today). Some of its flats had been requisitioned by the government. Unlike other film people, she gave up all trappings of stardom, travelled in public buses to fight court battles. She juggled her film finances to ward off auctions on two occasions and a civic injuction on another.
She wanted all of us to join cinema. Only I stand devoted to it. My siblings said it is too irregular a profession. My mom said, all life is irregular. That was her message to us. Never give up. You have keep trying and trying all the time till your last breath and the opportunity will create itself.
From left to right: Daughter Naqi Ali (Nandini Kamdar), son
Haidar Ali, Pramila, son Asgar Ali and eldest son Maurice Abraham
Click to view attachment
As a pilot in Vijay Bhatt's Bijli opposite actor Jairaj. It was directed
by Balwant Bhatt in 1939.
Click to view attachment
A still from Jungle King, directed by Nari Ghadiali in 1958.
Click to view attachment
With Amol Palekar
Click to view attachment
was she angloindian? just thinking of her looks and name
QUOTE(deep750 @ Aug 30 2006, 01:10 PM)
was she angloindian? just thinking of her looks and name
Not anglo-Indian Her real is jewish and she was from a jewish background. Just like Nadira (heroine of AAN) in the fifties of the Jewish background.
NASIR.
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