FilmIndia (1940)

FILM INDIA June 1940 being possessed, hypnotised and as long as he is in that condition, any talk of his manners is meaningless. How many of us have some time or other thought of writing to Greta Garbo or Norma Shearer or Devika Rani! There is a wide field of selection and one can pick one's type and choice. That is the first stage of adoration and it is fortunate that most of us stop at that. Few muster the courage of actually writing the letter and imploring the inevitable autographed photo. Fewer still have the courage or the opportunity of meeting their idol in person. And those that survive this last stage of astral fever no longer remain fans. They become fiends. Footlight fiends! MARLENES LEGS— ONCE AND NOW! In my own salad days my particular fancy used to be Marlene Dietrich. I hailed her as the one and only star for me. A big portrait of hers adorned my study. I am quite sure that I would have then forgotten my manners (and probably my morals) had there been the least chance of meeting her face to face. As it was, my adoration was sort of sublimated. The famous Dietrich legs became for me a legend and a hot piece on "Legs and Legends'' was consequently published in more than one Indian paper. The article still has an honoured place in my file — it was rather nice — but I have long since ceased going into ecstasies over those legendary legs. To-day I consider Marlene Dietrich all that a woman ought not to be. Her fleshless face, her curveless figure, her buttonless trousers — all create a veritable revulsion in me and I cannot stand her picture from a mile. I know I am being utterly unfair (not to say untrue) to a very Cleveland capable actress. But I am lifting the veil off my own fan past just to give the reader a glimpse into the psychology of the starstruck. Honestly I don't regret, much less repent, my experience. 1 consider myself all the better for the emotional purge through which I passed. Even in the case of those who have made fools of themselves, 1 may say that it is better to forget one's manners and be kicked into sense by a cinema star than to forfeit one's calf-heart and be led first to the altar, and subsequently by the nose, by that girl who is casting sheep's eyes at you across the balcony. The devil, said La Dietrich, is a woman! THE AGE AND MIND OF THE FAN The fan is a symptomatic product of modern civilisation. We of the year of grace 1940 pride ourselves on being without any delusions or illusions. But verily the silver screen is the greatest illusion in history. The stars scintillate in their firmament and beckon us. Even the most fierce iconoclasts amongst us have had (in their teens) their own private idols before whom they burnt myrrh and incense of emotion. These illusions and idols are really essential for the emotional equilibrium of the young. Even if they cause some harm in a few cases, by and large they do a world of good. The late teens and the early twenties are the years when we are struck by the fan fang. I have yet to meet a fan above thirty. It is the adolescent who is the most fanly of fans. Sexually just waking, emotionally in a welter, intellectually not matured, it is the mind and spirit of the boy or the girl in teens which is most susceptible to the footlight infection. I am quite prepared to admit that, here and there, the celluloid gods and goddesses may corrupt the manners (and sometimes even the morals) of the young generation. But they also certainly save it from emotional and spiritual frustration. After all the fever is so shortlived, howsoever delirious it may prove during its run. A child is all Leela Chitnis will be seen once again in "Bandhan" the new social picture under production at Bombay 42 Talkies' Studios.