Happy Birthday, Padmini!

I know one of you out there disputes it, but I am still happy to take the word of most sources that Padmini was born on June 12, 1932.

By the way, all of these clips can be found at the great YouTube channel Padmini162 aka Dancing Queen Padmini.

Patay Khan (1955)

I am grateful that Tom has finally started to put some of his recent projects on YouTube, because the way things were going, for both rational and irrational reasons, I never would have gotten around to downloading all of that stuff. So, although I have been having an extremely busy time lately, I have managed today to cut off the rest of the world so that I could start watching these movies. And finally, I’ve had a chance to see Patay Khan.

There have been a few times in the past when I loved the songs from a Noor Jehan film so much before I saw the actual film that I was worried that the film would disappoint me by comparison, but the film did not do so; it really came through for me. Certainly, that was true of Anmol Ghadi and Dupatta and mostly of Mirza Sahiban and Nooran, too. Unfortunately, it’s not true of this film, which doesn’t come close to the quality of some of the songs that it contains. Although, Noor Jehan does show much of the sweetness and charm that she showed in Mirza Shaiban… Which is kind of somewhat fitting since this film is also about a love affair that meets some conflict/resistance at some point – or two such love affairs, actually, as the other one involves the secondary character whom the film was named after for some reason; i.e., Patay Khan. But these affairs are not very compelling, to say the least. And then at some point, the character who is Noor Jehan’s lover (whose name I have already forgotten and am not that interested in looking up) ends up being the victim of some con scheme whereby he is taken by some western pimp sort of character to a place where he is seduced in an unconvincingly rapid fashion by a woman who is being referred to as the “princess.” (Meanwhile, I should not forget to mention that the pimp character, for some unexplained reason, calls himself Mr. Nevermind. That was sort of intriguing. Did Kurt Cobain see this film?) Anyway, in a way, this is like shades of Mirza Sahiban turning into shades of Shree 420…but it is little more than shades. I will say that after our “hero” disappears into this unconvincing seduction scenario, the film does start to get a little better. One reason is that Noor Jehan seeks the help of a Sufi wise man type who is by far the most interesting character. Close to four years ago, I posted two scenes involving her interactions with this character and said that the film looked very good. But I didn’t know at the time that those scenes made the film look good because they were from a part of the movie that was much better than the rest.

But as I was saying above, Patay Khan does have some very good songs. And one of those songs, as I have also mentioned before, was actually unprecedented in certain ways… It was sung by Noor Jehan in two languages, for two different characters, depicting two completely different moods. And Noor Jehan does this in a beautiful, flawless, and utterly convincing manner. If only the film itself were as convincing and inspiring as the voice of Noor Jehan. But I guess we can give it a little credit, at least, for containing songs like this in the first place…

—————————

P.S.  I should add that I did enjoy the puppet show at the beginning (which is screen capped for my present image header).  The show involves the scene of a beggar appealing to the more fortunate, and the show is also followed by some nice philosophical lines from Patay Khan (the character) comparing the puppet to the poor man who has to labor to make money for the rich (a subject close to my heart, as a few people out there know).  This scene reminded me quite a bit of the opening of the Balraj Sahni-Vyjayanthimala starrer Kathputli, but Kathputli didn’t come out until two years later, so there is a chance that it actually copied this.

Azurie

This week, I have finally been discovering the first great item dancer of Hindi cinema. I have seen her and been aware of her before, but I didn’t fully know who she was. But now it’s all clicked into place.

I guess that discovery started with my discovery of the identity of the dancers in my favorite scene from Ratan (1944). A while back, there was a discussion here of people trying to guess who the dancers were…

Everyone loved the male dancer, but no one seemed to realize at the time I posted this that he was the father in the Minoo/Mehmood clan, Mumtaz Ali. That fact showed up in YouTube comments, etc., pretty quickly. There was also one comment on YouTube that named the female dancer as Azurie. Admittedly, there have been disputes as to whether or not the dancer in other scenes up on YouTube was really Azurie, but until someone tells me otherwise, I’ll take the word of that one comment that she was the dancer in “O Janewala Balemwa.” One reason I believe this is because I read elsewhere that Azurie was a major influence on the woman whom I originally mistook as the first great item dancer; that is, Helen’s mentor, Cuckoo. This is mostly conjecture, but I think you can actually see that the dancer in “O Janewala Balemwa” was an influence on Cuckoo…

—————————————————

Recently, I also saw a picture of Azurie that popped up on the Vintage Era page of Facebook. (And if that isn’t enough to intrigue someone, what is?)

I also learned that Azurie was one of the great old female Jewish stars of Indian cinema that we’ve been talking a lot about lately. (So, what perfect timing it was to start learning about her! And by the way, there is a very good list of Jewish Bollywood stars in a discussion at the Jews of India Forum.) In terms of national origins, her mother was Indian and her father was German. That information can be found in a decent post over at the Cineplot Encyclopedia. It was there that I learned, also, that she migrated to Pakistan. She did not do this in 1947, but in 1960, somewhat like Rehana (who migrated to Pakistan in 1956). According to Cineplot, her first film might have been one called Nadira (like the name of another famous Jewish actress…), which was made in 1934. Her last film in India was Bahana, which was released in 1960, and she starred in other films in Pakistan, such as Jhoomar, which actually has a release date of 1959. She died in Pakistan in 1998, at the age of 90 or 91.

So, Azurie was clearly around for quite a while, too. I hope this means I can dig up some more scenes with her in them, whether in films or elsewhere, and other info, too. I would like her to continue to be a subject in this blog. Welcome, Azurie!

Revising the “Filmi Favorites” Page

I have removed the “Filmi Favorites” page from public viewing and put it into draft mode, because I have decided that I want to make some fairly significant revisions, such as . . .

Pushing the dates back more. I have been doing this continually since I started the page, as my fondness for the Vintage era has grown. I am thinking now that instead of 1944-1964, I will make the two-decade period more even; i.e., from 1940 to 1960. I could actually include some more favorites if I made it 1938-1958, but that would be more complicated, and 1940-1960 looks neater.

By the way, when I move the dates further back, this will enable me to include Kanan Devi, who will rank as my third-favorite female singer, just behind Noor and Lata (respectively). I will also be able to include a few other films in my favorite soundtracks list.

Regarding that soundtracks list, I also might add a little information in parentheses. At present, I have each film listed with its music director, but to be honest about it, the only time when the music director plays such a dominant role in determining whether a soundtrack will be one of my favorites is when his name happens to be Naushad. More often, the starring singer is at least as important (especially when her name happens to be Noor Jehan).

I am also going to make the list more specific to “Hindi and Urdu films.” This won’t change the list much (it will mainly be a change in labeling), because there presently is only one film left on the list that was made in another language (i.e., Uthama Puthiran). This might be disappointing to the people who have credited me with covering South Indian cinema a lot in the past. But my knowledge of South Indian cinema really is based mostly on dance, and when it comes to blogging about South Indian dance in cinema, Minai has far surpassed me at this point. I also have studied a little Hindi and Urdu in the past couple of years (albeit with questionable success), so I have another reason for limiting the list to those languages. But most importantly, it would be much more difficult to make a “Filmi Favorites” list that accurately represented other Indian languages. (Think of how complicated it might get if I were to seriously consider Bengali and Punjabi!)

By the way, I appear to have some extra time in the next 10 days, before I move to a new city and a new job. So, I shouldn’t have much of a problem completing the list before then. I might even do it much sooner, if I don’t feel compelled to take some temp work or to leave the apartment and enjoy the May sunshine.

So . . . stay tuned!

Nimmi Now

Five Songs with Gope

Because I mentioned him a lot a couple of posts ago, some people told me they couldn’t recall having seen him in any films, and he popped up prominently when I was viewing my favorite Shamshad Begum songs as well as the new upload of Mirza Sahiban… I have decided to post several favorite songs that either starred or featured Gope. In the last two songs here, he is just an onlooker, but a very distinctive one. For those who don’t know, you can spot him by looking for the heaviest fellow in the clip – who is also often the funniest. But he was a fairly convincing villain, too…

——————————-
P.S. Reading a little about Gope, I learned that he was born in Sindh. I looked for Gope performing “Lal Meri Pat,” but alas, no such luck.

Farewell, Shamshad Begum

I have just learned some very sad news from Madhu of the Dustedoff blog, that Shamshad Begum has died. It was only ten days ago that we were celebrating her 94th birthday (and as I said, my Latika post was originally a Shamshad Begum post, because she had done the terrific vocals to that song). RIP, Shamshad Begum.
—————————-
P.S. On April 14, 2011, I posted my own list of my ten favorite Shamshad Begum songs. I was reminded of this today when I checked my stats and saw close to 100 hits on this post via Google (at about 6:15 pm New York time). I then went back to the post and fixed a few things, replacing two videos (one was missing and one could use improving) and adding a little note about Latika. (I actually had identified her by name, but I couldn’t find anything else out about her at the time.) And by the way, my list today would be pretty close to the one that I posted two years ago, maybe with only the slightest changes.

Shalom Bollywood

It was pure coincidence that I wrote a post about Gope’s “beautiful Jewish wife” shortly before a screening of the film Shalom Bollywood at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. I did not know about this event until my friend and blog reader Ann informed me in an e-mail that my post was “fantastically timed.” But I also must thank Swarup (whom all this blog’s readers should know by now) for the article link that he sent in comments to the last post. I had no idea that I was about to receive this very interesting info!

It was also a coincidence that just a little while earlier, I wrote a post about Nadira that linked to other articles on the same subject and featured the photo that is now being used as the “profile” pic on Shalom Bollywood‘s Facebook page. Nonetheless, I am glad that I have unintentionally been promoting this project, because I should have posted about it sooner. Now I am able to post about it knowingly, and I can even add a couple of trailer/excerpt clips. These are very entertaining, and I hope that it won’t be long before I get to see the entire film.

Gope’s Beautiful Jewish Wife, Latika

Yep, according to my latest research, that’s who she is! And by the way, happy 94th birthday, Shamshad Begum!

—————————–
P.S. There is also a great shot of Ruby Myers acka Sulochana somewhere in the middle. She’s a big woman here (though maybe not as big as Latika’s husband), and she’s wearing a nice big hat. This is the best clip of this song that I have seen, and it includes very nice parts that were edited out of the version(s) that I’ve posted before.

“Dil Cheez Kya Hai” Performed By Aditi Bhagwat, a Disciple of Roshan Kumari