Devika Rani

At 85 years old, Devika Rani has this physical status:

Devika Rani Chaudhuri, usually known as Devika Rani (30 March 1908 – 9 March 1994), was an actress in Indian films who was active during the 1930s and 1940s.

Widely acknowledged as the first lady of Indian cinema, Devika Rani had a successful film career that spanned 10 years. Born into a wealthy, anglicized Indian family, Devika Rani was sent to boarding school in England at age nine and grew up in that country.

In 1928, she met Himanshu Rai, an Indian film-producer, and married him the following year.

She assisted in costume design and art direction for Rai's experimental silent film A Throw of Dice (1929).

Both of them then went to Germany and received training in film-making at UFA Studios in Berlin.

Rai then cast himself as hero and her as heroine in his next production, the bilingual film Karma (1933), made simultaneously in English & Hindi.

The film premiered in England in 1933, elicited interest there for a prolonged kissing scene featuring the real-life couple, and flopped badly in India.

The couple returned to India in 1934, where Himanshu Rai established a production studio, Bombay Talkies, in partnership with certain other people.

The studio produced several successful films over the next 5–6 years, and Devika Rani played the lead role in many of them.

Her on-screen pairing with Ashok Kumar became popular in India. Following Rai's death in 1940, Devika Rani took control of the studio and produced some more films in partnership with her late husband's associates, namely Sashadhar Mukherjee and Ashok Kumar.

As she was to recollect in her old age, the films which she supervised tended to flop, while the films supervised by the partners tended to be hits.

In 1945, she retired from films, married the Russian painter Svetoslav Roerich and moved to his estate on the outskirts of Bangalore, thereafter leading a very reclusive life for the next five decades.

Her persona, no less than her film roles, were considered socially unconventional.

Her awards include the Padmashri (1958), Dadasaheb Phalke Award (1970) and the Soviet Land Nehru Award (1990).

Background and education

Devika Rani was born as Devika Rani Choudhury on 30 March 1908 in Waltair near Visakhapatnam in present-day Andhra Pradesh, into an extremely affluent and educated Bengali family, the daughter of Col. Dr. Manmathnath Choudhury by his wife Leela Devi Choudhury.

Devika's father, Colonel Manmatha Nath Chaudhuri, scion of a large landowning zamindari family, was the first Indian Surgeon-General of Madras Presidency. Devika's paternal grandfather, Durgadas Choudhury, was the Zamindar (landlord) of Chatmohar Upazila of Pabna district of present-day Bangladesh. Her paternal grandmother, Sukumari Devi (wife of Durgadas), was a sister of the nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Devika's father had five brothers, all of them distinguished in their own fields, mainly law, medicine and literature. They were Sir Ashutosh Chaudhuri, Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court during the British Raj; Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri and Kumudnath Chaudhuri, both prominent Kolkata-based barristers; Pramathanath Choudhary, the famous Bengali writer, and Dr. Suhridnath Chaudhuri, a noted medical practitioner. The future Chief of Army Staff, Jayanto Nath Chaudhuri, was Devika's first cousin: their fathers were brothers to each other.

Devika's mother, Leela Devi Choudhury, also came from an equally educated family and was a niece of Rabindranath Tagore. Thus, Devika Rani was related through both her parents to the poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Her father, Manmathnath Choudhury, was the son of Sukumari Devi Choudhury, sister of Rabindranath Tagore. Devika's mother, Leela Devi Chaudhuri, was the daughter of Indumati Devi Chattopadhyay, whose mother Saudamini Devi Gangopadhyay was another sister of the Nobel laureate. Thus, Devika's father and maternal grandmother were first cousins to each other, being the children of two sisters of Rabindranath Tagore. Nor was this all: Two of Devika's uncles (Chief Justice Sir Ashutosh and Pramathanath) were married to their first cousins (mother's brother's daughters), the nieces of Rabindranath Tagore: Prativa Devi Choudhury, wife of Sir Ashutosh Choudhury, was the daughter of Hemendranath Tagore, and Indira Devi Choudhury, wife of Pramathanath Choudhury, was the daughter of Satyendranath Tagore. Devika thus had extremely strong family ties to Jarasanko, seat of the Tagore family in Kolkata and a major crucible of the Bengali Renaissance.

Devika Rani was sent to boarding school in England at the age of nine, and grew up there. After completing her schooling in the mid-1920s, she enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and the Royal Academy of Music in London to study acting and music. She also enrolled for courses in architecture, textile and decor design, and even apprenticed under Elizabeth Arden. All of these courses, each of them a few months long, were completed by 1927, and Devika Rani then took up a job in textile design.

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Career

Devika Rani first met her future husband, Himanshu Rai, an Indian barrister turned film producer, who was in London preparing to film his forthcoming film A Throw of Dice. Rai was captivated by Devika's "extraordinary talents" and she was accepted to join the film's development team, but not as an actor. She quickly agreed, and she was assisting him in areas such as costume design and art direction. The two also went to Germany for post-production work, where she had the opportunity to see the film-making techniques of the German film industry, in particular, G. W. Pabst and Fritz Lang. She registered for a short film-making course at the Universum Film AG studio in Berlin, inspired by their film-making techniques. Devika Rani attended various aspects of filmmaking and took a special course in film acting. Around this time, they both appeared in a play together for which they received numerous accolades in Switzerland and Scandinavian countries. She was also trained in Max Reinhardt, an Austrian theatre director, during this period.

In 1929, just after the debut of A Throw of Dice, Devika Rani, and Himanshu Rai were married, A Throw of Dice, was born.

Devika and Himanshu Rai returned to India, where Himanshu produced a film titled Karma (1933). It was his first talkie, and like his previous films, it was a joint effort of people from India, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Devika Rani, Rai's lead actress, wanted to portray Devika Rani as the female lead, and this was her first appearance on stage. Karma is considered to have been the first English language talkie made by an Indian. It was one of the first Indian films to have a kissing scene. The kissing scene involving Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani lasted for about four minutes, and eight years later, this holds the longest kissing scene in Indian cinema as of 2014. Devika Rani performed a song in the film, a bi-lingual song in English and Hindi. This song is said to be Bollywood's first English song.

In May 1933, Karma premiered in London in both English and Hindi. The film, which was also screened at a special screening for the Royal family at Windsor, was well received throughout Europe. Devika Rani's performance in the London media was internationally praised, as she received "rave reviews." Devika Rani was lauded for her "beauty" and "charm," while still quoting her as a "potential star of the first magnitude," according to a critic of The Daily Telegraph. Following the film's debut, she was invited by the BBC to appear in Britain's first television broadcast in 1933. She also launched the company's first short wave radio radio broadcast to India. Despite its success in England, Karma did not care about Indian audiences and turned out to be a disappointment in India when it was announced in Hindi as Nagin Ki Ragini in early 1934. Despite this, the film received a solid critique and helped Devika Rani establish herself as a leading actress in Indian cinema. Sarojini Naidu, an Indian freedom campaigner and poet, described her as a "lovely and gifted little lady."

The couple returned to India in 1934 after Karma's pivotal success. Even though the Hindi version of the film, which was released in India in 1934, failed without a trace, Himanshu Rai, a Bengali playwright and screenwriter who had worked in London and Franz Osten, who wrote several of Rai's films, was able to establish Bombay Talkies, partnering with Niranjan Pal, a Bengali playwright and screenwriter who had worked in London and Franz Osten, who produced several of the film's.

Bombay Talkies was one of the country's "best-equipped" film studios on its inception. The studio will function as a launch pad for future actors such as Dilip Kumar, Leela Chitnis, Madhubala, Raj Kapoor, Ashok Kumar, and Mumtaz. Jawani Ki Hawa (1935), a crime drama starring Devika Rani and Najm-ul-Hassan, was shot entirely on a train.

In Devika's next film, Jeevan Naiya, Najm-ul-Hassan was also a co-star in Devika's next venture. Devika and the two co-stars developed a romantic relationship, and during Jeevan Naiya's shooting schedule, Devika eloped with Hassan. Himanshu was both angry and ill. Since the leading pair were unavailable, production was stalled. A significant portion of the film had been shot and a substantial sum of money, which had been taken as credit from financers, had been spent. Although the runaway couple made merry, the studio sustained significant financial loss and a loss of credit among bankers in the city.

Because both of them were Bengalis and spoke the same language with each other, Sashadhar Mukherjee, an assistant sound-engineer at the studio, had a brotherly relationship with Devika Rani. Devika Rani was able to alert the fugitive couple and persuaded her to return to her husband after she was contacted. Divorce was practically impossible in the India of the 1990s, and women who eloped were deemed no better than prostitutes and were shunned by their own families. Devika Rani knew that she would not be able to get a divorce or marry Hassan under any circumstances. She worked with her husband under the auspices of Sashadhar Mukherjee, requesting that her finances be separated from those of her husband as a condition for her return. She will be paid separately for his work in his films, but she will be expected to single-handedly pay the household bills for the house in which both of them will live. Himanshu decided to do this in order to save face in society and keep his company from going bankrupt. Devika Rani returned to her marital home. However, husband and wife will never be the same again, and it is estimated that the couple's friendship was largely restricted to work and little to no love existed between them after this episode.

Himanshu Rai replaced Najm-ul-Hassan with Ashok Kumar, who was the brother of Sashadhar Mukherjee's sister, as the hero of Jeevan Naiya despite the additional expense involved in re-shooting several portions of the film. Ashok Kumar's six-decade career in Hindi cinema was the debut, as it may appear, of his debut, improvable as it may have been. Najm-ul-Hassan was fired from his position at Bombay Talkies (this was the time in which actors and actresses were paid monthly by one specific film studio, and they were unable to work in any other studio). Because of his fame as a jerk, he was unable to find jobs in any other studio. His career was marred and he sank into obscurity.

Achhut Kannya (1936), the studio's next film was a tragedy drama starring Devika Rani and Ashok Kumar portrayed an untouchable girl and a Brahmin boy who fell in love. The film is considered a "landmark" in Indian cinema because it challenged the country's caste system. Devika Rani's casting was considered a mismatch because her appearance did not correspond to that of a poor untouchable teenager due to her "upper-class upbringing." However, her collaboration with Ashok Kumar became very popular, and the two of them went on to star in as many as ten films together, with the bulk of them being Bombay Talkies productions.

Bombay Talkies made several women-centric films in the 1930s, with Devika Rani playing the lead role in all of them. She was paired opposite Ashok Kumar in the majority of the studio's films, who was "overshadowed" by her. Jeevan Prabhat, who was born in 1937, saw a role reversal between Devika Rani and Ashok Kumar; she played a Brahmin woman with a high caste who is accused by society of having an extra-marital affair with an untouchable man. Izzat (1937), a Romano and Juliet based in Romeo and Juliet, was set in the medieval period and depicted two lovers of two rival clans of a Maratha empire. Nirmala, a young woman who is astrologer, was born in the following year and was urged by an astrologer to abandon her husband to ensure a fruitful pregnancy. She played a Rajput princess in Vain, her second release of the year. Durga, her only appearance in 1939, was a romantic drama that told the tale of an orphanage girl and a village doctor played by Ashok Kumar.

Following Rai's death in 1940, there was a rift between two sides of the Bombay Talkies led by Mukherjee and Amiya Chakravarty. Devika Rani assumed principal responsibility and took over the studio with Mukherjee. She produced and appeared in Anjaan co-starring Ashok Kumar in 1941. Basant and Kismet were two of her studio's most popular films in the ensuing years. Basant Kismet (1943) contained anti-British messages (India was under British rule at the time) and turned out to be a "record-breaking" film. Devika Rani appeared in Hamari Baat (1943), which also had Raj Kapoor playing a small role.

Dilip Kumar, a newcomer from Jwar Bhata (1944), a film directed by her, was selected by her for a role in Jwar Bhata (1944). An internal struggle that arose in the studio prompted prominent actors such as Mukherjee and Ashok Kumar to leave her and start a new studio named Filmistan. She left the film industry due to a lack of funding and passion. She discussed in an interview with journalist Raju Bharatan that one of the main reasons for her leaving film is her decision not to compromise on "artistic values" of film-making.

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