Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs

Archive for the ‘Biography of artists’ Category


This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

Blog Day :

3491 Post No. : 14023 Movie Count :

3871

There was a time when the films made in Hindi could be classified easily as A grade, B grade and C grade films. A grade films were those made by big and famous banners with top class actors and leading music directors. B grade films were those made with second rung of actors, director and music directors. C grade films were those films which were made by not so famous banners, almost unknown actors directors and composers. Usually C grade films used to be action/stunt films, made on shoestring budgets, having a fixed story line resembling Tarzan, Hercules or Hollywood action films of Robin Hood, with the background of a jungle, tribe people, king-queen-wicked wazir and similar stories.
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This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

Blog Day :

3484 Post No. : 13994 Movie Count :

3861

Today’s song is from film Azaadi-35.

It is always a pleasure for me to write on films and songs of the 1930s and the 1940s. It is a different world altogether and traversing on the path of these decades is easy, for there is no crowd here. Not many writers are interested in discussing songs from the 1930s in details.

There are several reasons for this. First and foremost is lack of information. Considering what our love for recording history of old films and the artistes is, one has to be lucky to a great extent to have enough material to write about, in the first place. Secondly, most artistes of the 1930s and early 1940s were the lot carried forward or brought forward from the Silent Era. By the end of the first 10 years, most of these brought forward artistes went into oblivion and new force of artistes entered the film industry.
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This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

Today’s song is from a very little known film ‘Nirmal’ from 1952. During the period of the 50s, the film industries in all centres, i.e. Calcutta, Madras and Bombay were in full steam. The Partition had made a quantitative and qualitative change in the Hindi film industry. Many seasoned and successful artists had left India, creating a void suddenly. However, this proved to be an opportunity in disguise for many artists ‘waiting in the wings’ in the fields of  acting, film direction and music direction. The void was filled up almost immediately.
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This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

Today’s song is from film Lajawab-50. It was a production of Variety pictures – a company owned by actress Ashalata Biswas- wife of Anil Biswas ( real name Mehrunnisa Bhagat). It is needless to state that the music for this and every film of this company, was composed by Anil Biswas. The film was directed by the veteran J.P.Advani, who was known to Anil Biswas from the mid 30s. However, they came together only in 3 successive films, namely Veena-48, Laadli-49 and Lajawab-50.
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This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

Today’s song is from the landmark film ‘Amar Jyoti’ (1936), made by the Prabhat Film company, Poona. It was directed by V Shantaram. It was photographed by his elder brother V Avadhoot and the music was by Master Krishnarao Phulambrikar. All the songs were written by Pandit Narottam Vyas. Today’s song is sung by Vasanti and chorus. The song is also used as a background song few times in the movie since it conveys the essence of the film’s theme- fight against injustice.
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This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

This article is his 600th writeup in the blog.

Today’s song is from film Aandhi-40. The film was directed by Dinesh Ranjan Roy, music was by K.C.Dey and this song is sung by Pankaj Mallik and Radha Rani.

There is a reason why I selected this song. I wanted a song sung by Radha Rani, so that I get an opportunity to settle the issue of multiple Radha Ranis. ” Same name confusion ” is very common in the world of Hindi cinema. Luckily, the confusion existed only between 1931 and 1960. There are many many cases of same name Directors, Music Directors, Singers and Actors. Information on all names is extremely difficult to come by. Still I managed to write on 15 pairs of Same name Artistes in 3 articles and tried to clarify the confusions.
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This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

During the last two years or so, I have been working on a major exercise of presenting rare songs from films released in the 1940s on the Blog. In the process, I became aware of some of the productions houses (called banners), producers, directors, actors, singers, lyricists and music directors etc that were unknown to me earlier. One of the little known banners which I came to know about during the last few months was Sunrise Pictures. But I had no idea about the owner/s of this banner.
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This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

In my previous article on the song “Kat Gayi Waadon Mein“, I have talked about Mulkhraj Bhakri, writer, producer and lyricist from the Lahore film industry, who became one of the many victims of the country’s partition in 1947 . In Bombay (Mumbai), due to his hard work, he regained his position in the Hindi film industry. 

In this article, I propose to talk about one more victim of partition who was born with a silver spoon in a Gujarati family settled in Karachi and actively connected with the Lahore film industry in the 1940s. I am not talking about Dalsukh M Pancholi but director, Ravindra Dave who happened to be his nephew. Let me unfold Ravindra Dave’s story.
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This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

During 1945-47, Hindi film industry went through a difficult phase. The speculative gains made by some businessmen during the period of WWII which were partly chanellised in the film industry, dried up which affected the film production. When the film industry was just recovering from the after effect of WWII, communal riots broke out on the eve of as well as following the partition, affecting film productions at Bombay (Mumbai)whereas Lahore film industry was badly affected as many film financiers and technicians migrated to India.
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This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

What is common among Sulochana (real name: Ruby Mayer), Rose (Rose Musleah), Pramila (Easther Victoria Abraham), Sabita Devi (Iris Gasper) and Ramola Devi (Rachel Cohen)?

They all were Jews (almost all of them being Baghdadi Jews) hailing from Calcutta (Kolkata) and were star actresses in Hindi films during 1930s and 40s. Barring Ramola Devi, all of them started their filmy career with silent films. It is surprising that those days when oriental women were mostly relegated to the four walls of their homes, how these Baghdadi Jew actresses found their way to the film industry which was not regarded as a respectable profession even in their Middle-East culture. To understand this, it is necessary to go into the genesis of Baghdadi Jews in India.
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