FilmIndia (Feb-Dec 1949)

ecember, 1949 flLMlNDI A ivanm-id-deen. Iyyaka nabudu wa Iyyaka nasta'een. Kd-i-nassarat al mustaqeem. Sirat-al Lazeena ana'mta |<aihim Ghair-il maghdoob-i a'laibim wa laddallin. j meen'". After that beautiful prayer can Meuboob be Bone? Nor can we! That if Habib Hussein, the little boss of the Liberty Inema, could understand die beauty and fervour of iat prayer, he would not collect a crowd of greedy guns I bid for his cinema. That film actress Geeta Bali seems to have mistaken magistrate's court for a studio set the way she sat in ;r car and sent up her dummy to answer a charge of living her car at 60 miles per hour. When the Predency Magistrate said: "What does she think she is? ill her up"', Geeta quickly went up three steps at a je before the Magistrate lost his humour. A court not a set, little one, nor is the Magistrate a Kedar larma to accept the dummy for lighting. That when Income-tax officer Jadhav called upon iraiya to show the picture in which her toothless anny Badshah Begum worked to earn thousands from ! producers, Suraiya was stumped. And so will be unnawar Sultana when Jadhav wants to see Suraiya ltana on the screen. This guy Jadhav is becoming a pilar screen fan these days the way he sees pictures d makes notes. They say that he counts even the <tra# in a picture. What love of pictures! That the Income-tax Department has evidently secura smart guy in the ever-smiling Jadhav whose disarrn{ smile has made many producers confess their "black" a with the result that Jadhav now knows very well the nplete scientific process by which white money i•ned into black and vice \ersa in the film industry. But i person who has beaten Jadha\ so far is our popular r Yakub. That Munnawar Sultana is learning English these TB to be able to convince Income-tax Officer Jadhav re easily. But the woman whom she carries with her English practice seems to be teaching her the wrong rds as Jadhav still insists on seeing the pictures in ich Suraiya Sultana worked and was paid by the probers. That Dr. N. D. Patel recently examined Suraiya and lared her heart completely out of danger. That ws that Dev Anand did not do much damage after God bless Suraiya's heart and may it live long to lak the producers' hearts while meeting her everBreasing demands! I That realising the shortage of sugar during Divali. lie Rajkamal boys recently devised a method of wiring some sweetmeats without much sweating. At ■ ial of "Dahej" songs they praised Jayashree's Beaky songs and asked for sweetmeats. The next day I entire staff got sweetmeats. Now they laugh both wer voice and her intelligence. Poor Jayashree, she ■) good and simple. I That the new Evacuee Property Ordinance ha9 ■Jcly allayed the suspicions of Muslims in India and strengthened their belief in the secularity of our state. Their pop-eyed expression has changed into broad smiles as the new Ordinance lent caste to their sons, nephews and in-laws in Pakistan. We have now a real secular state with all freedoms for the Muslims. Jai Jawahar! That we should have half-a-dozen more Ordinances tying up the majority hand and foot to emphasize our secularity and to prove that we are so hospitable a people that we throw even democracy overboard to prove that democracy is not the rule of the majority but a licence to the minority. Jai Jawahar! That Producer W. Z. Ahmed, who took his star-wife Neena all the way to Pakistan after relieving his Indian creditors of several lakhs, does not seem to have found the Garden of Allah a very congenial place for his umpteen money-making plans. Alter running a Hindu cinema for a while, he flirted with the stage and has now become a salt merchant in Karachi. That Ahmed's salt business, however, does not seem to be giving the right taste to his home life the way Neena is reported to have demanded a divorce from him. Some friends, however, have temporarily relieved the saltish strain on the family life. That Neena's miserable mental life in Ahmed's home is making her ex-husband Mohsin also miserable and he is worrying about his ex-wife and having long consultations these days with Ahmed Abbas, a common friend of both the ex's. In "Sipahiya", a social theme, produced and directed by Aspi, Madhubala gives an excellent performance as the romantic village maiden. IS