We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
May, 1940
FILMINDIA
to ape the habits of the sons of capitalists who spend their time either drinking "bootleg" wine or playing rummy in the corner room of a certain local club. But that does not entitle anyone to talk of them (as a class) contemptuously just as it would be preposterous to generalize about national leaders on the basis of the fact that one or two of them keep mistresses in Mussoorie or that some of them are not averse to an occasional drop of alcohol!
THEY SLANDER THEMSELVES!
The most preposterous thing, however, is that the film stars are being constantly slandered by their own films. Take any Indian film in which one of the characters is a film star — it is the same story from "Cinema Girl" to "Laxmi" — and you would know what I mean. In these pictures, the film star is depicted as a woman of loose morals and the studio atmosphere is shown as being far from healthy. The worst offender, it is regrettable to observe, was the recent Huns' picture "In Search of Happiness" in which the character of Chanchala provided a most cruel caricature of a film star. The studio life depicted in New Theatre's "Millionaire" was not very inspiring. In "Maen Hari", Ragini the film star, looks at the bare body of a young fisherman and falls in love with him and brings him to town living with him apparently on terms of intimacy without marriage. What kind of an impression can the public take home from such pictures? They say to themselves: "Well, these producers ought to know how the film stars behave. Perhaps they are even worse than they are depicted in these films."
LIVING ON EARNINGS OF PROSTITUTES?
And thus the slander is spread, and the irony is that the stars themselves help to spread it. The producers, perhaps, like to keep up this false impression in the public mind for reasons of their own. Certain Calcutta producers and studio executives were heard remarking that the stars ought to be kept in their proper place and, on being pressed by journalists to state their views on the social status of film stars, one of them said, "They are entitled to the same social position that they occupied before they joined the films." The allusion was perhaps to some stars who were once singing gills or courtesans. But the logic of it is patently wrong and a wag among the journalists retorted, "Will you apply the same principle to lawyers, politicians and the film producers also?" Would Shakespeare have been denied membership of exclusive clubs because he began his life holding the reins of horses in front of Garrick Theatre? Would Edgar Wallace have been refused admission to decent society because he was a foundling.
These producer-snobs who seem to look down upon their own stars as if they were street girls ought to know that prostitution is not a legal offence but living on the earnings of prostitutes is!
STARS, WHY DON'T YOU REVOLT?
Whatever excuse the public, the press and the producers may have for continuing to spread this slander, the pertinent question is: why don't the stars revolt against this scandal? Here is something that the Film Artistes Association can do. Will the President of the Association and members of its Executive Committee protest against the vilification of their tribe in films?
An educated film artiste, on seeing "Ardhangi," said that had she been in the place of Leela Chitnis she would have refused to play the role of Arundhati, M.A., as it is liable to spread a false impression about educated girls. One hopes there are more such selfrespecting film artistes.
The film artistes owe it not only to themselves to stop this slander but also to the industry that they serve. On every hand we hear "what the industry needs is more educated and talented artistes" but how do you expect respectable people to send their sons and daughters to work in this profession if, besides the yellow press and the scandal-mongering public, the films too are allowed to spread the false and monstrous lie that "Film Actors are all pimps and film actresses are all prostitutes"?
GULSHAN and SARDAR MANSOOR in Wadia's "Vijay Kumar."