FilmIndia (Feb-Dec 1949)

1, 1949 film industry, it is time for the filmgoers to openly DOtt those films where such persons appear on the " en. For, supporting such artistes is like nursing J social crime. f ven a section of Hollywood showmen is reported ave demanded a halt to the scandalous escapades of r movie stars after the indignation having reached fever-pitch with the arrest of Robert Mitchum for z addiction. One group of theatre-owners in America is said to e threatened to boycott all films that feature players I indulge in off-the-screen indiscretions and scandals. Some of the recent raids of the \ igilance Branch rJombay have not only brought the scandals of a notoiis section of the film industry to light, but given enih indication of the gravity of the situation which c not be ignored. Let each one of this notorious fraternity in the filmfeijp be made to pay the price of their growing disreHid and violation of even the mo*t elementary code of ■man decency and conduct in public before more prov iters and pimps succeed in invading the film trade to I ip a rich harvest through star flesh which seems to I re a greater lure and fascination for some of the sexDgry Sethias than the common variety obtained in the ■-light districts. In the meantime the Criminal Investigation Departfint of the Bombay Police would do well to comb out M entire Shivaji Park area which has now become a C itable hell of vice and gambling with little film actses turning their hornet into brothels and film actors nking and gambling till the early hours of the morn If the film producers, many of whom are perhaps 1 worst scums found in any part of the world, are not injana will be seen on the screen after a long time in " Amar Kahani ", produced by Kamal Kunj Cbitra. FILM INDI A prepared to check this evil by boycotting bad girls and boys, let the Police Department at least cleanse the Augean stables from time to time. must have some more decency to enjoy our hard-won freedom. " NATH " AND " SWAMY " ON THE SCREEN ! Of all the idiotic things that appear in the Indian films the staggering exhibition of a Hindu wife always addressing her husband as " Nath " or " Swamy " is about the most disgusting. In all these long years which I have spent on this planet visiting thousands of Hindu homes, some of them run on the most orthodox principles of the traditional Hindu life. I have not yet come across one married woman of any age, between 13 and 75, who has ever addressed her husband either as " Nath " or " Swamy " as Indian film producers would have us believe. _\or have I found in the religious scriptures of the Hindus anv injunction to the Hindu wife to address her husband as Nath " or Swamy ". And as a Hindu I have read all the important religious scriptures and hundreds of other semi-religious books of the Hindus. And yet step into any Indian cinema showing a story of orthodox Hindu life and you will hear the cowlike Hindu w ife calling her husband " Xath " or " Swamy " over a hundred times within two hours. It is a marvel how the husband, w ho like every man is heir to the proverbial brute, never turns round and strikes the woman even once for calling him such names which have no sanction either in society or in religion. The three ' Ds ' of story writing — Dave. Dwivedi and Daryani — and .Muslim directors like Kardar, Yusuf and Mehboob are perhaps the most responsible persons in perpetrating this outrage on Hinduism, picture after picture, unconscious of the historical fact that neither Hindu society nor Hindu religion ever demands this form of address from a wife to her husband. If there is one Hindu woman in India who addresses her husband in this manner she must be shot dead as a crazy woman. Never did a Hindu wife call her husband " Nath " or " Swamy " in India's long history nor is she doing now. But film producers keep telling us that the Hindu wife does "abuse"' her husband in that manner and yet they claim to ?.:irror the realities of Hindu social life in their so-called social pictures. It is high time that some of our film writers and producers study contemporary Hindu social life as it actuallv exists in the country before they inflict on us such monstrous distortions created by their own imagination. The Hindu woman who calls her husband " Nath " or "Swamy" is merely a myth of pedantic literature and as such has no place on the screen which is supposed to be a mirror of real life. Let the screen writers and producers therefore kill these words once for all and rid the screen of a ridiculous anomaly which is neither Hindu nor Indian. YOU'LL HARDLY BELIEVE — That in the scramble for securing the Liberty Cinema, Manu's magic box at Marine Lines, Producer Mehboob got the better of Producer V. Shantaram with the result that " Andaz " pushed u Apna Desh " out of the II