1.Arunodaya a.k.a. The Rising Sun (Dawn) Bhagwati Mishra Master Vithal, Nirasha, Yakub, Boman Irani, Wamanrao, Syed Husen, Manekbai
Yakub
Yakub Khan Mehboob Khan, known as Yakub, was an Indian Hindi film actor born into a Pathan family in 1904 in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India. He died in 1958 after a career spanning thirty years in the film industry. He is best known for his comedic villainous roles. He commenced his career as an extra, but soon did roles as a hero and later as a villain. He became one of the most renowned screen villains, while achieving equal success in comedy and character roles.Yakub appeared in over 300 films.
Yakub ran away from home at an early age, and did odd jobs such as a motor mechanic and table waiter before joining the ship "S. S. Madura" as a kitchen worker. He left the ship after travelling to various places, like London, Brussels and Paris, then returned to Calcutta where he worked as a tourist guide, among other jobs. He finally came to Bombay now Mumbai, around 1924 and joined the Sharda Film Company.
During his travels, Yakub watched the films of Hollywood actors, and became greatly influenced by Eddie Polo, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Wallace Beery and later by Humphrey Bogart.Yakub's first film was Bhalji Pendharkar's silent Bajirao Mastani (1925), which also starred Master Vithal. It was produced by the Sharda Film Company. His first talkie was Meri Jaan (1931), with Sagar Movietone and directed by Prafulla Ghosh, where he played the title role of the Prince. This film has also been credited as Romantic Prince. The film had Master Vithal, Mehboob Khan and Zubeida co-starring in it. His enactment of the role of an angry resentful son in Mehboob Khan's Aurat (1940) made him popular to the extent that his acting in this film is considered as one of the finest performances in the Indian Cinema.The role was later performed by Sunil Dutt in Mehboob Khan's famous remake of his own film with the new title Mother India (1957). Yakub's popularity in those days can be gauged by the credit roll of films such as the S K Ojha directed Hulchul (1951), which had a star cast of Dilip Kumar, Nargis and Sitara Devi, where his name was credited as '…and your favourite, Yakub'.
Yakub was an "acknowledged master of comedy" along with other actors such as Johnny Walker, Gope and Agha, but their vast talent was unused, which was a "gross injustice", according to the B. K. Karanjia co-edited book; Genres of Indian Cinema. His comic pairing with Gope and Agha was well liked by the audiences, and this caused the film-makers to use their combination in several films. Prominent of such films were Sagai (1951), Patanga (1949) and Beqasoor (1950) with Yakub and Gope. Yakub, Prithviraj Kapoor and Chandra Mohan were in the highest pay bracket of their times.The triumvirate of Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor, who held reign in the Indian film industry from the late 1940s to the end of 1970s, has been compared to Chandra Mohan, Yakub and Shyam, who were at the top of the acting roster from 1930 to early 1950.
Yakub directed three films; Sagar Ka Sher and Uski Tamanna in the 1930s, and Aiye in 1949. Sagar Ka Sher or Lion of Sagar, was the first film he directed as early as 1937 under the Sagar Movietone banner. His co-stars in this film were; Bibbo, Pesi Patel, Sankatha Prasad, Raja Mehdi and David. The music director was Pransukh M. Nayak. Uski Tamanna also known as Her Last Desire was made in 1939 under Sagar and directed by Yakub. The film starred Yakub, Maya, Bhudo Advani, Kaushalya, Sankatha Prasad, Satish and Putli. The music was composed by Anupam Ghatak. He directed his third and last movie, Aiye, in 1949 under the Indian Production banner. It had Sulochana Chatterjee, Masud, Jankidas, Sheela Naik, and Ashraf Khan along with Yakub. The music in this film was composed by Nashad (Shaukat Dehlvi) and was Mubarak Begum's first film as a playback singer. Yakub's second cousin Allaudin was the song recordist for this film. However, he lost money on this film and called it the biggest mistake of his life.
When Mehmood was a struggling artist, he would hang around Bombay Talkies waiting for Yakub to arrive. Yakub knowing his financial state would give him one or two rupees in the form of loose change. Yakub was a deeply religious person and was called Maulana by his friends. Yakub died in Bombay, Maharashtra, India, at the age of 54 years.
2.Bharat Ramani a.k.a. The Enchantress of India Jyotish Bannerji Seeta Devi, Patience Cooper, Dadabhai Sarkari, Lalita Devi
3.Cinema Girl Bhagwati Prasad Mishra Ermeline, Prithviraj Kapoor, Mazhar Khan, Akbar Nawaz, Baby Devi
Prithviraj Kapoor (3 November 1906 – 29 May 1972)
He was a pioneer of Indian theatre and of the Hindi film industry, who started his career as an actor in the silent era of Hindi cinema, associated with IPTA as one of its founding members and who founded the Prithvi Theatres, a travelling theatre company based in Mumbai, in 1944.
Born in Samundri, Samundri Tehsil, Lyallpur District, Punjab, British India (present-day Samundri, Samundri Tehsil, Faisalabad District, Punjab, Pakistan), and lived in the village Lasara, Punjab (India) he was also the patriarch of the Kapoor family of Hindi films, four generations of which, beginning with him, have played active roles in the Hindi film industry. However, his father, Basheshwarnath Nath Kapoor, also played a short role in his movie Awaara. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan in 1969 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1971 for his contributions towards Indian cinema.
Kapoor began his acting career in the theatres of Lyallpur and Peshawar. In 1928, he moved to Bombay with a loan from an aunt. There he joined the Imperial Films Company. He acted as an extra in his first film, Do Dhari Talwar, though he went on to earn a lead role for his third film, titled Cinema Girl, in 1929. After featuring in nine silent films, including Do Dhari Talwar, Cinema Girl,Sher-e-Arab and Prince Vijaykumar, Kapoor did a supporting role in India's first film talkie, Alam Ara (1931).His performance in Vidyapati (1937) was much appreciated. His best-known performance is perhaps as Alexander the Great in Sohrab Modi's Sikandar (1941). He also joined the Grant Anderson Theater Company, an English theatrical company that remained in Bombay for a year. Through all these years, Kapoor remained devoted to the theatre and performed on stage regularly. He developed a reputation as a very fine and versatile actor on both stage and screen.
By 1944, Kapoor had the wherewithal and standing to found his own theatre group, Prithvi Theatres, whose première performance was Kalidasa's Abhijñānaśākuntalam in 1942. His eldest son, Raj Kapoor, by 1946, had struck out on his own; the films he produced had been successful and this was also an enabling factor. Prithviraj invested in Prithvi Theatres, which staged memorable productions across India. The plays were highly influential and inspired young people to participate in the Indian independence movement and the Quit India Movement. In over 16 years of existence, the theatre staged some 2,662 performances. Prithviraj starred as the lead actor in every single show. One of his popular plays was called Pathan (1947), which was performed on stage nearly 600 times in Mumbai. It opened on 13 April 1947, and is a story of a Muslim and his Hindu friend. By the late 1950s, it was clear that the era of the travelling theatre had been irreversibly supplanted by the cinema and it was no longer financially feasible for a troupe of up to 80 people to travel the country for four to six months at a time along with their props and equipment and living in hotels and campsites. The financial returns, through ticket sales and the rapidly diminishing largesse of patrons from the erstwhile princely class of India, was not enough to support such an effort. Many of the fine actors and technicians that Prithvi Theatres nurtured had found their way to the movies. Indeed, this was the case with all of Prithviraj's own sons. As Kapoor progressed into his 50s, he gradually ceased theatre activities and accepted occasional offers from film-makers, including his own sons. He appeared with his son Raj in the 1951 film Awara as a stern judge who had thrown his own wife out of his house. Later, under his son, Shashi Kapoor, and his wife Jennifer Kendal, Prithvi Theatre merged with the Indian Shakespeare theatre company, "Shakespeareana", and the company got a permanent home, with the inauguration of the Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai on 5 November 1978.
In 1996, the Golden Jubilee year of the founding of Prithvi Theatre, India Post, issued a special two Rupee commemorative postage stamp. It featured the logo of the theatre, the dates 1945–1995, and an image of Kapoor. The first day cover, (stamped 15-1-95), showed an illustration of a performance of a travelling theatre in progress, on a stage that seems fit for a travelling theatre, as Prithvi theatre was for sixteen years, till 1960.On the occasion of 100 years of the Indian cinema, another postage stamp, bearing his likeness, was released by India Post on 3 May 2013.
His filmography of later period includes Mughal E Azam (1960), where he gave his most memorable performance as the Mughal emperor Akbar, Harishchandra Taramati (1963) in which he played the lead role, an unforgettable performance as Porus in Sikandar-e-Azam (1965), and the stentorian grandfather in Kal Aaj Aur Kal (1971), in which he appeared with his son Raj Kapoor and grandson Randhir Kapoor.
Kapoor starred in the legendary religious Punjabi film Nanak Nam Jahaz Hai (1969), a film so revered in Punjab that there were lines many kilometres long to purchase tickets. He also starred in the Punjabi films Nanak Dukhiya Sub Sansar (1970) and Mele Mittran De (1972). He also acted in the Kannada movie Sakshatkara (1971), directed by Kannada director Puttanna Kanagal. He acted as Rajkumar's father in that movie.
4.Father India a.k.a. Hamara Hindustan R. S. Choudhary Sulochana (Ruby Myers), Jal Merchant, Mazhar Khan, Mehtab, Madanrai Vakil, Jilloobai, Jamshedji
Mehtab (1918–1997)
She was a popular Indian actress of Hindi/Urdu films who worked from 1928-1969. She was born in Sachin, Gujarat, to a Muslim family and named Najma. Her father, Nawab Sidi Ibrahim Mohammad Yakut Khan III, was the Nawab of Sachin, near Surat in the state of Gujarat. Starting her career in the late 1920s with small roles in films like Second Wife (1928), Indira B. A. (1929), and Jayant (1929) she went on to do character roles before acting in the lead opposite Ashraf Khan in Veer Kunal (1932). After almost a decade of doing mainly action-oriented roles, she came into prominence with the Kidar Sharma directed Chitralekha (1941) due to her bathing scene in the film.
She married her early co-star Ashraf Khan with whom she had a son. They divorced later and she married Sohrab Modi in 1946. Modi cast her in the historical drama Jhansi Ki Rani (1953), which in spite of having spectacular scenes and lavish sets was a disaster. She stopped acting in films following 1953 except to act in her last role as a character artist in Modi's Samay Bada Balwan (1969). She died in Mumbai on 10 April 1997.
Mehtab acted in her early feature film Kamaal-e-Shamsheer (1930) with W. M. Khan, which was produced by her mother under Excelsior film company. Her other films at this time include Hamara Hindustan (1930) a silent film which starred Ruby Myers, Jal Merchant and Mazhar Khan. She went on to act in several films mainly in action roles produced by the Sharda Film Company under different directors. Finally in 1932, she acted under the banner of Indian Art Productions as the main female lead in Veer Kunal opposite Ashraf Khan, an actor she was to marry and then divorce. She continued to work under different banners including Chandulal Shah for Ranjit Movietone in Bhola Shika (1933) directed by Jayant Desai with E. Billimoria as hero, and Ranchandi directed by Babubhai Jani opposite Navin Chandra. She also acted in a couple of films directed by Jaddanbai like Moti Ka Haar and Jeevan Swapna, both in 1937. However, in spite of working for several banners, none of her films fared well at the box-office.
Following the birth of her son, and subsequent divorce from Ashraf Khan, Mehtab acted in the Film Corporation of India film Qaidi (1940), which had Ramola, Madhuri, Wasti and Nandrekar co-starring along with her. Though not the main role, she was however noticed in the film leading to her being cast by Kidar Sharma for Chitralekha (1941), which had the famous bathing scene with Mehtab in the pool sans clothes. Sharma wanted to cast Mehtab in the title role, who till then had acted mainly in "stunt" films as he thought she was perfect for the role. As Sharma recalls, everyone except K.A. Abbas and a journalist of a magazine called Deen Duniya, published from Delhi panned the scene brutally. Chitralekha was also the debut of actor Bharat Bhushan, though in a small role. Mehtab was cast in Sharda (1942), along with Wasti, Ulhas and Nirmala Devi by A. R. Kardar for his Kardar Productions. The film is famous for the thirteen-year-old Suraiya, who became famous giving playback singing for a much older Mehtab. 1943 saw her acting in two more Kardar directed films; Kanoon with Shahu Modak, Nirmala Devi and Jagirdar and Sanjog a comedy film opposite Noor Mohammed Charlie, Wasti and Ulhas. The same year she did a Wadia Productions film directed by Homi Wadia, Vishwas (1943), which also starred Surendra, and Trilok Kapoor with composer Firoz Nizami debuting as the music director.
In 1944 Sohrab Modi cast Mehtab in the Central Studio production Parakh. Mehtab recalled in an interview that it was while shooting for this film that the two had grown closer. Modi did not act in the film which starred Mehtab with Yakub and Balwant Singh. Parakh had music by Khursheed Anwar and Saraswati Devi. Mehtab acted in films like Ismat (1944), Ek Din Ka Sultan (1945), Saathi (1946) and Shama (1946). In 1953, Modi produced, directed and acted in Jhansi Ki Rani, which starred a now ageing Mehtab as the young Jhansi Ki Rani. The film was a big financial disaster and the last starring role of Mehtab. Mehtab acted in Modi's Samay Bada Balwan (1969) in a character role.
Mehtab a Muslim, married Sohrab Modi, a Parsi, on 28 April 1946, her birthday. According to Mehtab, the marriage was not approved of by Modi's family. This was Mehtab's second marriage and she had an eight-year-old son Ismail, from the previous marriage to her first co-star Ashraf Khan. Her condition for marrying Modi was that her son, Ismail, stay with them. Modi talked the situation over with her ex-husband, regarding Ismail, who then lived with Mehtab and Modi following their marriage. Modi was twenty years older at 46 years and had just finished his relationship with Naseem Banu. Mehtab and Modi had one child together called Mehelli who they brought up as a Parsi. Sohrab Modi died on 28 January 1984, at the age of 85 years. Mehtab died on 10 April 1997 in Mumbai, Maharashtra and was buried at the Bada Qabrastan, Marine Lines, Mumbai.
Mehtab received the Best Actress award in a Hindi film for Parakh at the 8th Annual BFJA Awards.
5.Raj Laxmi Chandulal Shah Gohar, Raja Sandow, Ghanashyam, Putli, Baba Vyas
6.Udaykal a.k.a. Thunder of the Hills V. Shantaram, Keshavrao Dhaiber V. Shantaram, Kamala Devi, Baburao Pendharkar, Bazar Battoo, G. R. Mane, Ebrahim, Keshavrao Dhaiber
7.Khooni Khanjar (Fighting Blade) is a 1930 Indian silent film directed by V. Shantaram. The film was a costume action drama film co-directed by Keshavrao Dhaiber. It was produced by Prabhat Film Company. The cinematography was by Sheikh Fattelal and Vishnupant Govind Damle. The cast included Mane Pahelwan, Ganpat G. Shinde, P. Jairaj, Sakribai and Shankarrao Bhosle.
Shantaram had formed Prabhat Film Company in 1929 with Dhaiber, Damle and Fattelal and their first film Gopal Krishna was a big success commercially, which helped them produce five silent films in 1930-31. Khooni Khanjar was the first of them followed by Rani Saheba (1930), Udaykal (1930), Chandrasena (1931) and Zulum (1931).
P Jairaj
Jairaj got associated with prolific writer Mama Warerkar and an Indian Independence activist and a filmmaker Indulal Yagnik, who were impressed with his magnificent physique and Greek-God looks. They cast him as the lead in "Jagmagati Jawani" (1929), a silent film as a second lead artist or 'side hero'. However, his second film "Raseeli Rani" saw the light of the day first. He acted in 11 silent films between 1929-1931.
In 1931, the talkies embarked its presence and the cinema got talking and singing. Jairaj, owing to his Hyderabadi Urdu roots, carried Hindi easily in his first talkie film, Shikari. Jairaj, owing to his Hyderabadi Urdu roots, carried Hindi easily. However, singing wasn't his forte. Back in the day, actors sang their own songs and Jairaj's tendency to sing off key didn't help him. The advent of playback singing took care of Jairaj’s troubles. There was no looking back after this. His films, "Rifle Girl" , "Bhabhi" ,"Panna" and "Mahasagar No Moti" became huge hits, winning him many female fans.
Jairaj’s majestic personality and powerful dialogue delivery made him an instant choice to play the roles of the sword wielding Rajputs. He played the characters of Amar Singh Rathore [1957], Prithviraj Chauhan[1959], and Maharana Pratap[1960] among notable films. He also essayed the roles of Shah Jahan [1947], Tipu Sultan [1959] and Haider Ali [1962] with equal aplomb.
In the 60's he accepted character roles in "Insaniyat"; "Mujrim Kaun Khooni Kaun"; "Baharon Ke Sapne"; "Neel Kamal"; "Raste Aur Manzil" and many more. He also did cameo roles in "Don" and Khoon Bhari Maang".
In a glittering career spanning 60 years, Jairaj played a wide variety of lead roles opposite leading actresses such as Devika Rani, Durga Khote, Suraiya, Noor Jehan, Nargis, Shobhna Samarth and Shakeela. Besides, Jairaj also acted in three international films: the Russian production "Pardesi"; MGM’s "Maya" and 29th Century Fox’s "Nine Hours to Rama", in which he rubbed shoulders with top Hollywood stars like Robert Morley and Jose Ferrer. Jairaj also played roles in Gujarati and Marathi films, but surprisingly none in his mother tongue, Telugu.
In 1980, the Government of India conferred on him the highest film honour, Dadasaheb Phalke Award, for his contribution to Indian cinema as an actor, producer and director.
In November 1999 Jairaj lost his beloved wife Savithri, which left a deep void in his heart. A year later, this multifaceted film personality passed away on 11th August, 2000. He was 91.
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