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All posts for the month June, 2009
This version cuts off the end, but you get a nice beginning!
Mohammed Rafi/Bharat Bhushan, a radio, and Madhubala in Barsaat Ki Raat (1960)
K.L. Saigal, a radio, and Kanan Devi in Street Singer (1938)
Regarding the second clip below, I know I must have posted it three times already and at least once in the past few months. I haven’t forgotten, I haven’t “lost it” that much yet. But I’m posting it again because so many people have said they like “that dancer,” the woman dancing on the footpath, but few people seem to remember her name. Well, I found out her name, and she’s been in quite a few good dance scenes, so here are three of them…
I hope that by the time I finally get this movie, I haven’t burnt out on this song already from playing it hundreds of times…
Another instance of finding a clip to replace one that was removed from a year+-old post … I thought of simply putting this in the old post of early June 2008, but I had a bunch of explanation there (about where I found it, etc.) that no longer applies. So here it is again, for the present:
Apparently, I reminded Tommydan1 to put together his Sai-Subbulaxmi playlist. (Although he uses “and” instead of a hyphen. I don’t know if “and” is needed, but maybe the hyphen isn’t either and I should be writing their name the way I normally write Shankar Jaikishan (which is also spelled a few different ways). Well, as long as everyone knows who we’re talking about – and not enough people do!) So, go over there if you want to see a few more of the great filmi dances that they did between 1955 and 1963 (and wonder whatever happened to them since).
This isn’t usually the blog where you’ll see Bollywood fashion comments (there are other places for that). However, I thought I’d delve a little into this area for a moment…
A brief discussion occurred earlier about how Meena Kumari rode horses at the beginning of Azaad (but for some reason, never did in the film later on)… And I said that for some reason, I thought Vyjayanthimala was more convincing in her horseback riding roles. Now I realize that the main reason I had that impression was because of her tendency in the early movies to wear big horseback riding pants. Although I suspect that this was also a popular fashion at the time…
Her first appearance in the big horseback riding pants was in Bahar…
Then Vyjayanthi wore the great pants again in the opening scene of Sangham (1953) (as well as in the other versions of this movie, Ladki and Penn), which begins with her actually riding a horse (though unfortunately, you’re going to have to get through three minutes of mostly Telugu credits before seeing that):
Now, when Vyjayanthimala wore the big horseback riding pants, I think that was supposed to have a cute-little-girl kind of effect (because, basically, at the time, she was a cute little girl).
But the big horseback riding pants can also be worn to entirely different effect (and by the way, despite the first picture you see here, I am not referring to Dilip Kumar):
In my opinion, nobody could match Nadira in big horseback riding pants!
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P.S. Beautiful singing by Shamshad Begum through much of the above (though that’s P. Susheela in Sangham). Beautiful singing by Mohammed Rafi (in addition to Shamshad Begum) in Aan. Nice music by S.D. Burman in Bahar and S. Rajeswara Rao in Sangham, but really wonderful music by Naushad in Aan. (Very soon, I will have to see Aan!)
Apologies to any Dilip or Meena fans who might be offended… I love Dilip and (especially) Meena too. But there are a few films to see them together in, even another light-hearted film, Kohinoor, which is far better too (more cohesive, more involving, etc. – as Antarra correctly pointed out a few months ago). But how many films give a real role to Sai-Subbulaxmi (or Sayee & Subbulakshmi, etc.)? They are real characters in this film, hanging around here and there (and being very cute) before they do their fantastic dances.
They were the original reason I wanted to find this movie too, but I thought maybe my focus would change once I saw the whole film, especially since I had become more aware of the Dilip-Meena duo. But no, that didn’t change; I still like this film mainly for Sai-Subbulaxmi.
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P.S. As I’ve said when I’ve talked about these scenes before (long before I had a chance to see the movie), there are also nice Tamil versions of their dances up on YouTube. The Tamil versions are the first ones, actually. Malaikallan came out a year earlier, starring MGR and P. Bhanumathi. I wonder… If I watched Malaikallan, would I still feel that the real stars were Sai-Subbulaxmi?
