FilmIndia (1940)

FILMINDIA March 1949 Men are naturally more venturesome but recently a few cases have come to my knowledge where some women, too, have made a nuisance of themselves. A young and handsome hero of a Bombay studio was terribly embarrassed and annoyed by a series of letters from a woman in U. P. who constantly threatened to come and live with him as his mistress. Another leading man once received a visit from a woman who calmly announced that she was going to live with him. Fortunately for him, his wife and mother were living with him and, on seeing them, she immediately fled. TELEPHONE FIENDS Then there is that variety of well-to-do fans in Bombay who, with nothing else to do, keep on phoning to every star whose number they can manage to find. Life has been made miserable for some of the stars and no device seems to be able to save them from this menace. Even in their sleep they are constantly disturbed by their unseen, unknown "admirers" and to some of them the telephone bell comes to assume the grim ring of the knell of doom! Sometimes I think there is a streak of sadism somewhere in the psychology of these fans. Or else why should they always seek to annoy and cause trouble to those they are supposed to adadmire and adore. Take the re Renuka Devi with her three little daughters: Shabnam, Lubna, and Sumbul — perhaps three future stars of our screen. t cent case of the fiasco at the receptions given to Saigal in Bombay. The t^'o thousand students who had eatnered in the Cowasjee Jehangir Hah were presumably all Saigal fans. And yet by their rowdy behaviour they caused nothing but serious annoyance to the unfortunate star who was suffering from a sore-throat and was clearly unable tc oblige them with a song. Nor was this the first occasion when our Collegians have caused such fiascos. The same thing often happens at other meetings and shows. It is surprising that students who are believed to represent the intelligentsia among cine-goers should repeatedly give evidence of such deplorable lack of good manners I have already indicated how social environment and emotional frustration in th.3 lives of people causes them to t~ke such abnormal interest in film stars. The phenomenon is not peculiar to India. Indeed, in the West — particularly in England — the mass-adoraticn of stars has reached such limits that on his recent visit to England Robert Taylor was almost killed in a stampede of women anxious to kiss or at least to touch him. They went to the extent of tearing his clothes in order to secure a fragment as a keep-sake. All kinds cf tricks are done to get the attention of one's screen idols. There is the classic example of the love sick American who got himself packed in a trunk and mailed to a certain etar. By the tim~ the trunk reached its destination the man was almost dead. WIFE VERSUS KANANBALA There is something inherent in the star-system, the foundation of the capitalistic edifice of filmproduction, which causes these aberrations. With a view to persuading the cine-goers to see their films, irrespective of their artistic merit, the stars are given on the screen — and also otherwise through publicity — suoer-glamourized per sonalities. (The contrast is provided by Kathaketli dancers who use masks so that phyeicil attraction may not prejudic the appreciation of unadulterated art.) The movies have a way not only cf presenting artificiality realistically but 1hey have also the power of projecting the star personalities beyond the screen right into our lives, so that when Loretta Young or Cliudette Cclbert smiles in a close-up, each one of those in the audience has a feeling she is smiling exclusively for him. Therein lies the power as well as the danger of the star-system. The cine-goer soon becomes a fan and the fan before long is a devotee, nursing a personal attachment for