Forgotten Artists of Early Cinema and The Same Name Confusion Book 3
Author: Arunkumar Deshmukh
Publisher: Professor toofaani publishers, East Lansing, MI, USA
Price (Pothi.com): ₹590 plus shipping (Paperback)
Copyright: © Arunkumar Deshmukh
Pages: 161
No one can be a hero to his friend. We all know Arunkumar Deshmukh well, I also happen to have met him a couple of times. Yet I have been his admirer for many reasons. One, his archival knowledge of forgotten artists of early era and his ability to recall which is due to his excellent organisation of his data. Two, his zest for life and his desire to give back to the society his knowledge. He is into his mid-eighties and it is amazing that he learnt word-processing, and first handled a computer well past retirement when he was about 70.
I often remarked that he had many books in him. I am happy that of late he has published several of his books. Book 3 is in continuation of Book 1 and 2 of “Forgotten Artists of Early Cinema and The Same Name Confusion”, both of which I have already reviewed on this blog.
He has befittingly dedicated the book: “To all the forgotten artists”. Its PART ONE comprises brief profiles of over 50 artists, some of whom acquired long-lasting fame, such as Geeta Bali, Durga Khote, SN Tripathi, Pankaj Mullick, Kanan Devi, RC Boral; some familiar to those who have interest in old films and music; and some quite unknown, such as Vithaldas Panchotiya, Vanmala, Mirza Musharraf etc. The book cover has pics of (from top left corner): Hansa Wadkar, Dada Salvi, Zahoor Raja and Sulochana (Ruby Myers). There are profiles on all of them, the last mentioned, in the section on same name confusion.
Arunji has kind of launched a campaign on blogosphere to clear confusion about the same names. He has carried the messianic zeal in this Book 3 too. The PART TWO of the book deals with eight sets of same names. PART THREE and PART FOUR of the book have some articles of general interest and some interesting trivia.
The book befittingly starts with a tribute to Ardeshir Irani, the First Man of Talkies cinema – He was the maker of Alam Ara (1931), which has the credit of being the first talkies of Indian cinema. Before that our films were silent and Irani was an important personality in that era too. Any new technology disrupts an industry. There was scepticism about the switchover from silent to talkies all over the world. Many stars of silent era were phased out, as limitations of their dialogue delivery was exposed. Most studios of the early 30s, carried on making silent films too; thus, both the technologies co-existed for some years, until talkies became a rage, and no doubts remained about their viability. Irani himself was a man of many talents – he was producer, director, distributor, actor and writer, and a shrewd businessman. He was aware through his sources in Calcutta that Madan Theatres was close on his heels for the credit of being the maker of the first talkies. Irani cut short the number of songs, and beat Madan by a few weeks to create history.
Rafiq Ghaznavi was another man of many talents – actor, writer, singer, music director. He had a reputation with ladies with his charming personality and dress. A well-read man, he is the voice behind Mehboob Khan’s logo voice-over, Muddai lakh chaahe kya hota hai, wohi hota hai jo manzoor-e-khuda hota hai.
Chandramohan was one of the earliest film stars of our films. He debuted in V Shantaram’s Amrit Manthan (1934). Prabhat used to make bilingual films – in Hindi and Marathi. Though a Kashmiri, Chandramohan subsequently acquired enough proficiency in Marathi to act in Prabhat’s later bilingual films in both Hindi and Marathi. With his powerful grey eyes and dialogue delivery, tall, handsome frame, Chandramohan cut a dashing figure. He played the role of Emperor Jehangir in Sohrab Modi’s Pukar (1939) and a negative character in Roti (1942). Mughal-e-Azam was in the making since 1944. Chandramohan-Nargis were to play the lead roles in the film, but his early death derailed the project, it was later continued with Dilip Kumar-Madhubala-Prithviraj Kumar to turn into a magnum opus in 1960 we all know. Chandramohan’s is sadly a riches to rags story. He died in penury on 2nd April 1949.
Moving to the other extreme of an unknown name, Vithaldas Panchotiya was a producer, director, story writer, dialogue writer, screenplay writer, lyricist, singer and music director. Born in Gujarat, he was a staunch Gandhian and was associated with a drama company. Arunji has been able to compile his filmography which consists of 11 silent and 25 talkie films as actor, one film as a writer, 9 films as a director, two films as a lyricist, 2 films as music director. He sang 37 songs in 8 films. Compiling this data shows some perseverance.
Towards the end of PART ONE, there are interesting overview articles on other contributors, such as those from Germany: the legendary Franz Osten who directed several landmark films of the Bombay Talkies, including Achhut Kanya; their cinematographer Joseph Wirsching; Germans outside the Bombay Talkies, such as Paul Zils, the music scholar and composer Walter Kauffman, credited with composin the signature tune of the All India Radio; Marathi Artists; Bengali Artists, such as: Pankaj Mullick, Pahadi Sanyal, Kanan Devi, RC Boral, Nitin Bose, Debaki Bose; Stars from South, such as: SS Vasan, SV Ranga Rao, LV Prasad, P Bhanumathi, and so on.
PART TWO is about same name confusion, Arunji’s favourite topic. In this book he covers eight pairs. Two Sulochanas, separated by a generation. The elder Sulochana was of Jewish ancestry (born Ruby Myers) and she was a superstar of the silent era, smoothly transitioned in to the talkies, and in later films in mother’s role; Sulochana Chatterjee was not famous as a leading heroine, but she took to a mother’s role like a duck to water. Think of the film Sujata. Two Arun Kumars: the first, a cousin of Ashok Kumar and a famous composer and singer. His voice had an uncanny fit with Ashok Kumar. He sang many songs for hm, also many songs sung by Ashok Kumar on the screen were recorded in the voice of Arun Kumar. The other Arun Kumar (Ahuja) was an actor in early era. His venture into production was not successful. His wife Nirmala Devi who was also an actor and playback singer, had a successful career in classical music concerts. Their son Govinda achieved great commercial success, relieving his parents from financial distress.
PART THREE of the book, titled “Look what I found!” has some interesting trivia. One such is “Playback to Playback Singer” which shows Kishore Kumar’s 21 songs picturised on him were in the voice of other playback singers. The last PART FOUR of the book has two special articles: one on the impact of the Partition on the film industry on the two sides of the border; and the other on the fascination of the ‘C’ grade films for some film buffs.
Like Arunji’s other books and writings, this one, too, is packed with information about our early stars. One can weave a story about our industry as a whole. Some articles do give a story, others, the readers have to navigate through the story on their own. In that sense the book introduces us to many unknown facts and figures. It is a labour of love. But considering that the author is in his mid-80s, he deserves compliments for giving back to the society his knowledge and information.
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My last post was also on alankars; that was the jewellery women wear on different parts of their body. The language also needs alankars to beautify it. Without figures of speech a language would be quite bland. A British writer Nate White’s article, “Why do some British people not like Trump” went viral sometime back. It was not because of his xenophobic, bigoted, racist policies, nor his incoherent rantings, it was because he was crass in language, he didn’t show any wit, any wry humour, never said anything amusing or remotely funny – in short he was devoid of any figure of speech. They are integral to our everyday usage and we use many figures of speech without any conscious effort. In fact the two meanings of ‘alankar’ themselves constitute a figure of speech called ‘Yamak’ – that is, the same word is mentioned more than once in a text, each having a different meaning.
Last year around the time I wrote about the subtleties of female bonding on the International Women’s Day, a momentous event called “Pre-Wedding” was taking place at Jamnagar. It filled me with pride, as I am sure it would have many Indians, that at the bash hosted by an Indian tycoon the world’s top multi-billionaires and celebrities were landing up in their private jets at the Jamnagar ‘International’ Airport and dancing to his tunes, dressing up for multifarious events as per the given chart, and serving food to the guests with beaming smiles displacing the liveried waiters. Mark Zuckerberg for the first time in his life gave up his trademark T – the style statement of a Silicon Valley nerd – and ‘dressed up’ for the occasion. We also knew that some ladies were wearing on their person the GDP of some middle-sized countries. 
AK asked me in April last year whether I would like to write for Mohammad Rafi’s Centenary in 2024. Normally he would not have asked but I have been extremely irregular in the past one year. I had, always in mind, this topic about progression of Rafi’s career, his struggles and his evolving as a top singer. Since the start of 2024 I thought it was the right time for presenting my thoughts. So I suggested and he agreed. It would be in two parts, the first part covering the time upto 1955 and the second from then to 1970. The time limit is kept up to 1970, it being the span of SOY’s primary interest. Even if that has not been the case it would have been impossible to cover his whole career in two parts. It is hard to cover it in two parts, but we will have to adhere to some limit. 
While working on Mohammad Rafi’s solo songs from the 1940s and 1950s, I was able to locate more sad songs from various music directors. In fact, by 1950, Mohammad Rafi had already recorded several universally popular romantic duets and solo sad songs, like 
The birth centenary of Mohammad Rafi (December 24, 2024) has pulled me out of my Kumbhkarn like slumber. I don’t even remember when I contributed my last article to this platform. My apologies to those who expected more from me. Hopefully this article will make up for the delay.
Where is the mukhada gone, where is antara gone? For most of the history of Hindi film songs they did not go anywhere, they remained rooted where they were supposed to be. The classic structure of our songs was a mukhada with a catchy tune and refrain. This was followed by interlude music and two or three antaras with different tunes from the mukhada. Each antara would end with a connector line which would neatly segue into the mukhada/refrain. 
