FilmIndia (Dec 1937 - Apr 1938)

FILMINDIA * in our present day pictures. For instance, we sha.l •quote only one asoeci which of late has become a craze with several producers in Bombay. We refer io the Anglo-Indian girls who work in our pictures <ts 'Extras'. The number ot those girls is hardly thirty, but between them they have helped the producers to lose ihousards every year aurinq the last five ■years. Goaded by the impulse of supplying sex appeal Sn our noctures, some ot ihe producers departed on the disgusting practice ot engaging these girls as "extras' for community dances and as maids in scant v costumes. This would have been alright had we had more cand new faces coming to the screen from time to itime. But that has not been the case. Identically the same girls have appeared in numerous pictures ffrom month to month in different Studios and their ifaces have now become as disgusting as old posters <on new walls. And by God, what faces some of these girls "have got! Perfectly hermaphrodite, they neither appeal to men nor to women. For a tenner a day -which they get, they come with rouge and lipstick, shake their hips and legs, pocket the money and <jo away. Utter strangers 1o art and its appeal these pitiable, species, of womanhood present a formidable 'challenge to every thing sentimental, delicate and artisiic in human life. Driven to live on their wits, modern life has made some of these girls the most detestable scums <of society. Barring a tew exceptions none of these ■girls ought to have been allowed within a mile of a Studio with any pretensions in catering for ait. And yet, they have regularly provided an eyesore to our audiences — an eyesore that spells a big •question regarding the sanity ot our producers. 4 April 1938 Some of these girls are studies in human ugliness. Starving, they live on their lipstick; pale andi consumptive, they glow under the pink of rouge; illclad, they betray the ravages of sin on the human body and these disgraceful types are introduced into our pictures to provide the missing sex appeal which perhaps is lacking in our heroines. Producers who employ such girls must be condemned and doubly so if they are themselves men from respectable families whose lady members see their productions. So many times, have these girls been shown and reshown, exposed and re-exposed, that by now there is not a part of their body with which even a riff-rafi from the street is not familiar. By now every atom of sex appeal in these girls is • dissipated. Some of these girls misbehave soboldly Hi the Studios while working, that to kick them in the face would be a mercy. We have seen a couple of girls bursting out into sudden affection and kissing the director with a warmth that would have scorched the cheeks of a rhinoceros. And this happened in a Studio that boasts of a clean atmosphere. We have no objection to a tew good girls from the Anglo-Indian community seriously taking up screen as a career. They should be encouraged to a better position than a mere 'extra'. There are already some really useful top liners from this community. But the material we have described above must not be admitted in our studios to suffer a stain of utter debasement in our pictures. They are neither useful to the producers nor an ornament to the honest, hardworking community of Anglo-Indians in Bombay. We have had enough community dances from these lewd and fetid legs and let us in future have some relief as in that very relief there will be some novelty. Our producers certainly owe us this much.