JAIRAJ … AND HIS THREE KISSES
Bunny Reuben
He has kissed three of the Indian screen’s most popular leading ladies of the thirties and forties. He has hobnobbed with Hollywood and British stars and film-makers such as Stewart Granger, Melvin Douglas, Errol Flynn, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, William Holden and Sir Alexander Korda. He has co-starred with Robert Morley and Jose Ferrer in Mark Robson’s Nine Hours To Rama in which he played the role of G.D. Birla. He has travelled extensively in both India and abroad and met the ‘greats’ of world cinema in Russia, England and America. And he has made a successful transition from ‘silent’ to ‘talkie’ hero, from star to director and producer, and has grown old gracefully over the decades.
P. Jairaj was born on 28 September 1909 in Karim Nagar, of the old Hyderabad state, in a well-to-do and aristocratic family which, inevitably, frowned on the young man’s desire to go into films. His father never approved of the young man running away from home to Bombay to try his luck as an actor, ‘and he never spoke to me for over a quarter century!’ Jairaj remarks jocularly.
It is to his credit that Jairaj struggled from the very beginning in Bombay. He never sought to impress people with the information that the great Sarojini Naidu was his aunt or that Harindranath Chattopadhyaya was his uncle. Nor did he try to cash in on the fact that another aunt of his, Sunalini Devi, was a prominent film star in Bombay in the thirties.
‘I think the acting bug bit me at the age of six,’ Jairaj smiled reminiscently. ‘My aunt Sarojini Naidu used to organize Shakespearean plays and I was cast in one of them!’
Jairaj and I have known each other since our Filmfare years in the fifties—myself as a Filmfare staffer and he as one of the two most reliable organizers, along with actor David, of the Filmfare Awards functions from the fifties to the seventies. And I knew Jairaj well on two more personal levels as well—along with David and Manmohan Krishna, he used to be a fellow Freemason along with my father and father-in-law and they were constantly in and out of my home during the fifties; he was also a close friend, philosopher and guide of Raj Kapoor, and I remember many visits to Jai’s home with Raj over the years.
What I like best about Jairaj is the meticulous detail with which he has kept records of his over half-century-long career. He has maintained a film-by-film diary (since his first silent film Sparkling Youth or Jagmagthi Jawani in 1929 in which he played second lead). I have culled much interesting information from his diary. For example, about his film debut, Jairaj notes in the diary that ‘I have the distinction of being made up by the celebrated Marathi playwright Mama Warerkar who, incidentally, is my godfather in encouraging me to join the industry when educated young men shirked it and society sniggered at the profession.’ And note this— ‘I worked mostly for board and lodging.’
Who was Mama Warerkar? He was, to put it quite simply, known as the Bernard Shaw of Marathi literature, a famous littérateur who later became a Member of Parliament and instituted the Lalit Adarsh Kala Mandali, a cultural organization very active in those years. Bombay still remembers Mama Warerkar—the Sandhurst bridge connecting Chowpatty with Opera House in Bombay has been renamed the Mama Warerkar Bridge.
In 1930 Jairaj played the hero opposite old-timer Madhuri (Meena Kumari’s eldest sister) in Triumph of Youth, an adaptation of Prisoner of Zenda. His first film as hero was also his first double role and Jairaj notes in his dairy that ‘the work fascinates me. I also work as an assistant to director Nagendra Mazumdar, do all my action shots myself, go for location shooting to the Maharajah’s Palace in Baroda, have my first royal ride on an elephant. My boss [producer, he means] is Indulal Yagnik who was connected with Gandhiji and Vithalbhai Patel. And incidentally, I have my first drink with the Billmorias from Baroda.’
One would need an entire book to reproduce Jairaj’s fascinating diary, so I skip along to giving more details about the most interesting revelation I made about Jairaj in the opening sentence of this piece—about his having kissed three star leading ladies on screen.
The first kiss: 1930.
It was Jairaj’s fifth starrer. Titled My Hero the film was a Three Musketeers type of story set in the times of Maharana Pratap. ‘I became a proficient horse rider,’ Jairaj notes in his diary. ‘Madhuri (Meena Kumari’s eldest sister) is my first screen sweetheart and I have my first kiss with her on the screen.’ Jairaj makes an intriguing admission here: ‘I put my heart and soul into the role,’ he says, causing one to wonder whether it specifically referred to the screen kiss—and screen kissing used to be pretty passionate in the silent and early sound era!—or whether he was referring to the execution of the role in totality. Jairaj also notes that ‘For the first time I register as a leading man of the Douglas Fairbanks type.’
The second kiss: 1931.
Jairaj kissed the wildly popular heroine Zebunnissa in a film titled She or Aurat. This was a gypsy romance based on a thenrunning Hollywood film starring Joan Crawford and Nils Asther. ‘They tried to make a John Gilbert and Greta Garbo out of myself and Zebunnissa,’ Jairaj’s old diary tells us. It will be of interest to technicians, laboratory men and special effects experts that the cameraman for this and other early Jairaj starrers was Ambalal Patel, a dynamic and forward-looking young cameraman who went on to found, in later years, India’s first colour-processing laboratory Film Center, of which Ambalal’s youngest son Ramesh Patel is now the chief. ‘This film was again photographed by Ambalal Patel,’ Jairaj notes in his diary ‘who tried experiments with tinted film [this was 1930–31, mark you, sound had not yet come, let alone colour photography] and to try to give two-colour effect—a fairly successful film with good camera-illusion shots.’
The third kiss: 1937.
The ‘talkie’ era has arrived in 1931 and Jairaj lands his third movie kiss on the lips of that lovely, husky-voiced actress–singer Khurshid (songs were to come later and Khurshid was to become a sensational singing star a handful of years after this film was made). Produced by Saroj Movietone the film was titled Murad and was directed by Saki. ‘It was an exotic, gypsy type of romance,’ Jairaj’s diary reveals. ‘I am very well photographed by Hardip and I kiss Khurshid (the third heroine whom I kiss in movies). For the first time an experiment is tried to dub dialogues.’
What gives special importance to Jairaj’s old diary is that last line (about the dialogue-dubbing),which reveals the first stirrings of a technical perfection which was to come by leaps and bounds to Indian cinema.
Jairaj was one of those lucky few who made the transition from the ‘silent’ to the ‘talkie’ era successfully and I quote here extracts from two revealing passages in his diary. The first is titled END OF AN ERA (1931).
‘The silent film is coming to an end amid protest—and prejudices. It is the progress of the times. The web of intoxication woven by the silent screen comes to an end where everyone lived in the world of mute dreams. Big names in foreign films like Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Navarro, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford among the romantics, and people like Emil Jannings, Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd in the character roles—will become immortal.
‘I used to pay four annas for a cinema seat and I think I have seen practically one film a day, daily, from the cowboy sagas of Ken Maynard, Hoot Gibson and Buck Jones to the masterpieces of Erich Von Stroheim and Marmo. They were the years of great cinema while here in our country we had film stars like Sulochana, Gohar, D. Bilimoria and Master Vithal.
‘The accent is mostly on action while socials are being made with bold, contemporary themes—the sanctity of the home, the “other” woman, the farce of the “foreign returned” who cannot fit into our orthodox society; the big-name makers are Nanubhai Desai and Chandulal Shah as producers and R.S. Chowdhary as top director. Films are firmly established as a form of entertainment and they have come to stay.’
And the second extract is: THE BEGINNING OF AN ERA (1931).
‘The coming of the “talkies” has been foreshadowed with a lot of fear, especially for those who do not know the language: the new medium is looked upon with hostility. The actors, there are some who have come from the stage who strut around repeating couplets and generally showing off with passages recited in the old stagey style. The Muslim artistes feel superior because of the language. The language is to be Hindustani; it hold no fears for me because of my Urdu from Hyderabad. There is reshuffling in almost all the studios. Ardeshir Irani is the pioneer in the field, and the Imperial Film Company is making Alam Ara.
‘But the panic is there. For me the future looks blank because music has become very important and singers are in demand. There is confusion and chaos, I am without a job, though there were a few who were the last guard and were still making pictures, “silent” of course, because the theatres in our country are not yet wired for sound and new sound-projection machinery has not come.
‘I see my first talkie, a Reginald Denny story from Universal, and attend a shooting at the Imperial Film Company where Kamla Devi is working. I meet Professor Deodhar and through him I get an interview with Mr Naval Gandhi who has brought one unit from London to make a film here … that is the beginning.’
For Jairaj it was indeed the beginning. From 1931 to 1991 is a good, long sixty years and Jairaj took to the talkies as a duck takes to water. He went on to play a wide variety of heroes, valiant Rajput warriors, Muslim noblemen and all sorts of interesting historical and contemporary characters. Jai still has nostalgic memories of the putty nose he wore as Prithviraj Chauhan; the eleven months he kept his head clean-shaven to play Tipu Sultan; the time his stirrup broke during a headlong gallop along the ramparts of Agra Fort for Amar Singh Rathor where, had the horse stumbled, he’d have gone hurtling down sixty feet to a certain death.
There is so much more to Jairaj’s fascinating life and career in films. He acted as the leading man opposite Nargis in many films and then she starred in the first film which he produced, directed and acted in himself—Sagar in 1952. ‘Nargis was a warm and friendly person,’ Jairaj reminisces. ‘We’d worked together before in other films and she called me Jai while I called her Babs.’
Sagar was adapted from Tennyson’s ‘Enoch Arden’ and in it Jairaj the director tried to capture the authentic atmosphere of the sea and the life of the fisherfolk. The terse note at the bottom of the diary page where Sagar is listed tells it all in one word: FLOPPED. ‘Perhaps that’s why I never tampered with production– direction again!’ Jairaj grins ruefully.
If the attempt to produce and direct in 1952 was Jairaj’s first and last, so was his attempt, exactly twenty years earlier (1932), to sing his own songs in films.
In 1931 Jairaj had starred in his first ‘talkie’. Titled Shikari, the actor’s diary tells us: ‘The medium intrigues me. There is a sense of realism. The technique of dialogues is borrowed from the stage. This is my first experience of working with foreigners (Company: Eastern Films, London. Producer: Lord Barley. Director: Naval Gandhi) in a group marked by good breeding and education. I am paid Rs 300 for this film.’
Once the motion picture learned to talk, the next step inevitably was that it must learn to sing as well and in the very next year (1931) Jairaj was cast opposite Durga Khote and Noorjehan in a film called Patit Pawan in which Jairaj had his first and last highly embarrassing attempt to sing before the cameras!
‘It was a mythological film and Professor B.R. Deodhar was its music director (the late Professor Deodhar ran Bombay’s most famous music school at Opera House for decades). Because I was told I’d have to sing my own songs I engaged an ustad to coach me. Out of my remuneration of Rs 75 per month I paid Rs 10 every month to this ustad and applied myself assiduously to sa-re-ga-ma-pa-dha-ni-sa. But it was no use. After months of this the ustad flung his arms up in despair and said: “My boy, you certainly have dard in your voice—but no swar!” And he vanished!’
Then Professor Deodhar took over and coached Jairaj in the song he’d actually have to sing before the cameras. Remember, it was much before the era of playback singing. This was the time when the actor himself sang on the sets while the scene was being filmed.
Jairaj rehearsed this one song for a full month with Professor Deodhar and by the time the day to film the song arrived both thought the actor was perfect. On the sets they had mounted the orchestra on a trolley and Jairaj was made to stand beneath a tree. Jairaj remembers: ‘Cupid was looking in on the scene over my shoulder!
‘There was one mike for both the singer (myself) and the musicians. Anyway, they gave the clap and switched on the camera and I started to sing. I sang the entire song in three minutes at a stretch without pausing for breath and not bothering to see whether I was ‘in synch’ with the music! Of course, I wasn’t! My singing was a few jumps ahead of the music and on a different octave altogether but they’d started the camera and they finished filming me singing—and then they burst out laughing, all of them on the set, and it was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life! Of course, they never kept that song in the film!’
And this was Jairaj’s first and last attempt to sing his own songs before the cameras!
In 1982 the Government of India conferred on P. Jairaj the Dada Saheb Phalke Award in recognition of his sixty years of distinguished service to the Indian film industry.
Extracted from Follywood Flashback: A Collection of Movie Memoirs.