1935 - First female MD in the world
152 movies are produced this year. Three deserve special
mention.
(Note: I have been using the transliteration as given in
the Encyclopaedia, which is copied from the one given by the
producers of the movie. It is quite arbitrary, ad hoc and
confusing. From now on in all my postings, as much as possible,
I will use the transliteration scheme of Avinash Chopde, a scheme
which is simple, logical and sensible. Wouldn't it be wonderful if
everybody adopts it?)
1. The movie "dhuup chhaa.Nv or bhaaGY chakr"
Produced by New Theaters, Calcutta, directed by Nitin
Bose.
Music by R. C. Boral and Pankaj Mullick, lyricist Pandit Sudarshan.
There were 10 songs, 5 by K. C. Dey:
baabaa man kii aa.Nkhe.n khol
terii gaTharii me.n laagaa chor
aaj mero ghar mohan aayo
jiivan kaa sukh aaj prabhu mohe
a.ndhe kii laaThii tuu hii hai
(The last two were also recorded by Saigal as "version"
songs.)
But playback singing was introduced with the chorus song
mai.n khush honaa chaahu.N, khush ho naa sakuu.N
sung by Parul Ghosh (wife of the famous flutist Panna Lal
Ghosh and a sister of Anil Biswas), Suprova Sarkar, Harimati and others.
In the movie the song was presented as a stage song of a Drama company.
2. The movie "talaash\-e\-haq"
Produced and set to music by Jaddanbai for her own
company
called Sangeet Films and directed by C. M. Luhar. Another name for the
movie was "Search for Truth". Jaddanbai was a popular and renowned
singer of her day. She thrilled her listeners with her thumris and
daadraas over the Radio and through gramophone records. In 1918, she was
admitted for an operation in Lucknow, where she met a brilliant medical
student from Rawalpindi, Uttamchand Mohanchand, and, folks, this is
1918!, they fell in love! He was converted to Islam by Maulana Azad and
married her. Their daughter called Fatima Rashid was born on June 1,
1929
in Calcutta. With the screen name of Baby Raani, she appeared in this
movie, which turned out to be the first movie in the whole world to have
a female music director [Check!]. The baby grew up to debut in
Mehboob's
"taqdiir"
at the tender age 14, with the name Nargis, against her wishes. She
really wanted to be a doctor like her father. But the movie was so
successful that etc. etc.
3. The movie "devadaas"
This is by all accounts Saigal's best movie. Produced by
New Theaters
and directed by P. C. Barua, this movie debuted the music director Timir
Baran. The lyrics were by Kidar Sharma. It had Saigal, Jamuna, Rajkumari
(kalkattewali, the other one is banaaraswaali), K. C. Dey, Pahadi
Sanyal,
Nemo and Sitara. There were 10 songs, 3 by K. C. Dey, Saigal and Sanyal
each, one by Rajkumari.
According to Kidar Sharma, these two famous songs were
set to music by
Saigal himself, even though they are generally credited to Timir Baran:
baalam aae baso more man me.n
duHkh ke din ab biitat naahii.n
The songs were, however, recorded by Timir Baran
Bhattacharya, who died
on March 29, 1987 at age 83. Saigal also sang a thumri
piyaa bin aavat naahi.n chain
without any accompanying music. Timir Baran learnt sarod
from Ustad
Amir Khan and Ustad Allaudin Khan and was awarded the Sangeet Natak
Academy prize in 1950. In 1939, on a request from Subhash Chandra Bose,
he set "Bande matram" (which, incidentally is our national song) to
music in Rag Durga. This was broadcast from The Radio Station Singapur.
He gave music in about 10 Hindi and some Bengali movies.
Some other movies released in 1935 are:
"After the Earthquake" or "inqlaab" Raj Kapoor's first
movie; he was
a child actor at age 11. In the lead were his father and Devika Rani.
"anaarkali" First time this name was used for this
famous story.
"Barrister's wife" Possibly the first filmi qawwali
"nazariya tane hai tiir kamaan, jaane legi yah kis kis kii jaan"
written by Pandit Narayan Prasad Betaab, music by Rewa Shankar Marwadi
and Banne Khan, fimed on Noor Mohammad "Charlie" (clone of Chaplin) and
friends.
"dharam kii devii" First complete film by Anil Biswas
alone. He acted as a
beggar and sang three songs. His first ever is
"kuchh bhii nahi.n bharosaa duniyaa hai aanii jaanii"
"javaanii kii havaa" Saraswati Devi's first film. She
missed out being
the first female MD, but as far as I can tell, she is the second female
MD in the world [Check!].
"majnuu.n 1935" Harold Louis's movie after which he was
universally
known as majnuu.n. He made many movies with I. S. Johar in the
tradition
of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. "Children" may remember the Shammi Kapoor
vehicle "ham sab chor hai.N" (1956), in which the pair performed the
famous "yogi dance" and mouthed the Rafi-Durrani number "hamako ha.nste
dekh zamaanaa jaltaa hai".
"naagaanand" The first movie of Ramchandra Narhar
Chitalkar as an actor.
His first as an MD was the Tamil movie "jayagu.Dii", date unknown.
He played harmonium in "pukaar" (1939) and his first Hindi movie as an
independent MD was "sukhii jiivan" (1942). The first song he ever set
to music as an independent MD was Iqbal's famous, "saare jahaa.n se
achhaa", which, by the way, is a very famous patriotic song.
"nigaah\-e\-nafarat" Shobhana Samarath (Nutan's mom)
debuted.
It is clear from the length of this file (about 6k) that
I will
some times have to split the coming years into at least two parts.
Most of the info comes from the following books:
1. The Encyclopaedia, volume 1, compiled by Mr. Har
Mandir Singh
"Hamraaz", published by Mrs. Satinder Kaur, his wife.
2. Listeners' Bulletin, a monthly, edited by Hamraaz
Saahib and
published by the Secretary, the Flying Listener's Club, Kanpur.
3. Limca Book of Records, 1993 edition, edited by Vijaya
Ghose,
published by Bisleri Beverages Limited.
4. The Guinness Book of Movie Facts & Feats, by
Patrick Robertson,
published by Guinness Books in 1988.
Surjit Singh, a movie fan period.
surjit_singh@yahoo.com
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