FilmIndia (Jan-Jul 1943)

January 1943 FILMINDI A GLAMOUR BOYS OR GARBAGE MEN? Nowadays when you go round the town seeing Indian pictures, in a single day you come across a single actor working in four pictures at a time. When all these pictures are social stories, you find the same actor dressed in a common social costume and doing practically the same type of work through all the four pictures . This is how Indian producers present variety in entertainment—the same blasted face of the hero in four different pictures of four different producers. This is the tragic crop cinema fans are gathering nowadays as a result of the vicious free-lancing done by some of our leading film actors. Art and its idealistic pursuits have already been thrown to the winds. Our actors no longer believe in the time-honoured adage: "Art for art's sake". Some of them have become heartless racketeers with their first to fourth preferences operating with heartless accuracy . If these actors think that they are smart, they are very much mistaken By working in several pictures at the same time, they are shedding their glamour very fast — glamour which took them years to build. Too frequent appearances of a popular star dissipate his popularity and a stage is reached when people get disgusted with his face. If actors wish to be selfish, they must also be wise. There was a time when Motilal, Chandramohan. Prithviraj, Kumar, Jagdish, Jairaj and .others used to draw crowds. The reason lay in 'their appearance on the screen at long intervals . Today, none of these one-time well-known actors draws any crowds. They have all appeared in so many pictures, so frequently and so unfortunately that people 1 \ '', "bhakta kabir" ^ .. As we go to the press, we get the good news ^ | that "Bhakta Kabir", produced by Unity Pro | ^ ductions and released through the Bharat ^ 2 Pictures Ltd., has been exempted from the En ^ v V '/ tertainment Tax by the Government of Bombay, s V V ^ The Governments of the Punjab and Sindh £ ^ had long since exempted this picture from the ^ ^ Entertainment Tax, because of its Hindu-Muslim ^ ^ unity theme of which the picture makes no | 2 secret. But this is the first time that the slow £ ^ moving Government of Bombay has ever offi ^ £ cially blessed a picture thus and we congratu ^ ^ late the Government for this enterprise and ^ | thank our Ex-Sheriff M. R. A. Baig for his good | ^ efforts on behalf of a deserving Indian picture. ^ "Bhakta Kabir" is a picture our nation badly ^ 2 needs just at this time. 2 y i y <y Chic Sadhona Bose keeps the rhythm of the bells echoing through "Paigham", a social story of Amar Productions. are tired of their faces. People don't like to be overfed, however excellent the offering. Chandramohan once bragged that his pictures never failed and yet "Jhankar", a story built round him, failed to be popular. Motilal is very popular with the producers and keeps on collecting new contracts every month. But being popular with the producers is one thing and with the public quite another. When producers realize the grim fact that even Motilal's pictures fail, they will stop offering contracts to Motilal. Take the case of Kumar. When he first came to Bombay after his classic role in "Puran Bhakt" he was quite a craze with the people and the producers. Producers paid him big sums to star in as many rotten pictures as possible. Today, Kumar has to produce his own pictures to get for himself an acting chance. And as a producer he dare not take a chance with himself, so he takes in Chandramohan or prithviraj to help him out. That is what is going to happen with our glamour boys of today . They are going to be garbage men of the future. It seems quite wise to make hay when the sun shines. It may be a useful proverb in other walks of life but not so in this glamour industry where the continuance of the sun is more important than the making of the hay. 11