While most of the singing in Bollywood films is dubbed (actresses aren’t expected to be great singers, though they are expected to be top-notch lip-synchers), Suraiya, depicted here in Vayant Desai’s 1950 film Shaan, was a singer par excellence. At one point the highest paid female star in all of India, Suraiya was also the first Melody Queen (Malika-e-Tarannum) of the sub-continent. Unlike Bollywood love stories, which usually end happily, Suraiya’s own love life makes for a sad tale. Having fallen in love with her Vidya co-star Dev Anand (apparently he saved her when their boat capsized during the filming of a love song called "Kinare kinare chale jayen ge"), Suraiya’s maternal grandmother forbid her from marrying him because while Suraiya and her family were Muslims, Dev was a Hindu. Heartbroken, Suraiya vowed to remain a spinster the rest of her life, which she did, even with the likes of Gregory Peck sniffing up her tree. She died in January 2004, at the age of 74.
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What do you get when you pack an ill-fated love triangle, a conniving villain, multiple kidnappings, and a supernatural sidekick, all into three hours of non-stop song-and-dance? That would be a Bollywood film. Produc...
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What do you get when you pack an ill-fated love triangle, a conniving villain, multiple kidnappings, and a supernatural sidekick, all into three hours of non-stop song-and-dance? That would be a Bollywood film. Producing over 1,000 films a year, Bollywood, the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai, traces its history back to 1913, when Raja Harishchandra, the first silent feature film, made its way to theatres. Over the next few decades, Bollywood, just like its California-counterpart, would undergo the revolutions of sound and color, culminating in the post-independence golden age of the 1950s. While Bollywood pictures enjoy global popularity, they are particularly well loved in Russia, where for many years Western films were banned.
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Details and Dimensions
18.75" W, 27" H
This poster is a reproduction
