Bollywood: A History

Mihir Bose

Description

Hollywood may define our idea of movies, but it is the city of Bombay on the west coast of India that is now the centre of world cinema. Every year, the Indian film industry produces more than 1,000 feature films; every day, 14 million Indians go to a movie in the country; a billion more people a year buy tickets for Indian movies than for Hollywood ones. The rise of Bombay as the film capital of the world has been both remarkable and amazing. Bollywood movies themselves are a self-contained world with their multiple song and dance routines, intense melodrama, and plots that contain everything from farce to tragedy, but always produce a happy ending. The men and women who created these movies are even more remarkable; and it is this fantastic, rich, diverse story, a veritable Indian fairyland, that Mihir Bose, a native of Bombay, tells with vivid brilliance in the first comprehensive history of this major social and cultural phenomenon.

Sujets

• Hindi
• Song
• Performing arts
• Standard Hindi
• Cinema
• Dance
• Songs
• History
• Sholay
• Drama
• Music
• Indian
• Shahrukh Khan
• Film
• Bollywood
• Hollywood

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 09 mai 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9789351940456
• Langue: English

Extrait

BOLLYWOOD
Mihir Bose was born in 1947, just before Indian independence, and grew up in Bombay. He went to England in 1969 to study and qualified as a chartered accountant. Almost immediately he took to his first love of journalism and writing. He has written for all the major newspapers in Britain, including the Sunday Times for twenty years and the Daily Telegraph since 1995. Having concentrated on business journalism in his early years he now specialises in investigative sports reporting, particularly the growing field of sports business and politics. He has won several awards for his newspaper writing, including Business Columnist of the Year, Sports Reporter of the Year and Sports Story of the Year. His History of Indian Cricket was the first book by an Indian writer to win the prestigious Cricket Society Literary Award in 1990. His study of sports and apartheid Sporting Colours was runner-up in the 1994 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. He has so far written twenty-one books ranging from histories and biographies to books on business, cricket and football. He lives with his wife in west London.

OTHER LOTUS TITLES:

Adi B. Hakim, Rustom
With Cyclists Around the World
B. Bhumgara & Lal P. Bapasola

Anil Dharker
Icons: Men & Women Who Shaped Today’s India
Aitzaz Ahsan
The Indus Saga: The Making of Pakistan
Alam Srinivas
Storms in the Sea Wind: Ambani vs Ambani
Amir Mir
The True Face of Jehadis: Inside Pakistan’s Terror Networks
Ashok Mitra
The Starkness of It
Bhawana Somayya
Hema Malini: The Authorised Biography
Connie Haham
Manmohan Desai: Enchantment of the Mind
H.L.O. Garrett
The Trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar
M.J. Akbar
India: The Siege Within
M.J. Akbar
Kashmir: Behind the Vale
M.J. Akbar
Riot after Riot
M.J. Akbar
The Shade of Swords
M.J. Akbar
Byline
M.J. Akbar
Blood Brothers: A Family Saga
Maj. Gen. Ian Cardozo
Param Vir: Our Heroes in Battle
Maj. Gen. Ian Cardozo
The Sinking of INS Khukri: What Happened in 1971
Manoj Namburu
Moguls of Real Estate
Meghnad Desai
Nehru’s Hero Dilip Kumar: In the Life of India
Meghnad Desai and Aitzaz Ahsan
Divided by Democracy
Mushirul Hasan
India Partitioned. 2 Vols
Mushirul Hasan
John Company to the Republic
Mushirul Hasan
Knowledge, Power and Politics
Nayantara Sahgal (ed.)
Before Freedom: Nehru’s Letters to His Sister
Psyche Abraham
From Kippers to Karimeen: A Life
Rachel Dwyer
100 Bollywood Films
Rachel Dwyer
Yash Chopra: Fifty Years in Indian Cinema
Sangeeta Datta
Shyam Benegal
Sharmishta Gooptu and Boria Majumdar (eds)
Revisiting 1857: Myth, Memory., History
Shashi Joshi
The Last Durbar
Shrabani Basu
Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan
Thomas Weber
Gandhi, Gandhism and the Gandhians
V.Srinivasa
New Age Management: Philosophy from Ancient Indian Wisdom
Vir Sanghvi
Men of Steel: Indian Business Leaders in Candid Conversation
FORTHCOMING TITLES:

Ajit Bhattacharjea
Sheikh Abdullah: A Biography
A. Salam Qureishi
An Indian in Silicon Valley


To Caroline, withouth whose love, dedication, heroic support and encouragement this book would never have been possible. She has played the sort of role a Bollywood actress would love to play but never be able to emulate.

Lotus Collection
© Mihir Bose, 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher.
The right of Mihir Bose to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in UK 2006 by Tempus Publishing Limited The Mill, Brimscombe Port, stround, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QC
First edition published in India in hardback in 2007
Paperback edition 2008
The Lotus Collection
An imprint of
Roli Books Pvt. Ltd.
M-75, G.K. II Market,
New Delhi 110 048
Phones: ++91 (011) 2921 2271, 2921 2782 2921 0886, Fax: ++91 (011) 2921 7185 E-mail: [e-mail]; Website: rolibooks.com Also at
Bangalore, Chennai, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai and Varanasi

ISBN: 978-81-7436-653-5

Contents
Mihir Bose Biography
Acknowledgements
Prologue: With Pamela in Search of Bollywood

Part I: In Step with the World
1 The Creators
2 The Mighty Banyan Tree
3 Growing Under the Banyan Tree

Part II: When Bollywood was like Hollywood: The Studio Era
4 Mavericks, Eccentrics, Bigamists
5 The Road to Bombay via Munich and London
6 Making a Nation Through Films
7 The Children of Rai
8 Blondes and Brunettes: Bollywood’s White Women

Part III: Minting Film Gold in Bombay
9 Searching for the Right Masala
10 The Great Indian Showman
11 Bollywood’s Classic Era
12 Asif ’s Godot Finally Arrives

Part IV: A Laugh, a Song and a Tear
13 The Explosion of the Bombay Film Song
14 Laughter and Tears

Part V: Anger and After
15 A Shy Man and his Use of Anger.
16 The Great Indian Curry Western
17 Change in a Time of Darkness
18 The Final Frontier
19 Afterword
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index

Mihir Bose Biography
Mihir Bose was born in 1947, just before Indian independence, and grew up in Bombay. He went to England in 1969 to study and qualified as a chartered accountant. Almost immediately, he took to his first love of journalism and writing. He has written for all the major papers in Britain, having worked for The Sunday Times for twenty years before moving to The Daily Telegraph in 1995. Having concentrated on business journalism in his early years, he now specialises in investigative sports reporting, particularly the growing field of sports business and politics. He has won several awards for his newspaper writing, including Business Columnist of the Year, Sports Reporter of the Year and Sports Story of the Year. His books have been controversial and have also won awards. His History of Indian Cricket was the first book by an Indian writer to win the prestigious Cricket Society Literary Award in 1990. His study of sports and apartheid, Sporting Colours, was runner-up in the 1994 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. He has so far written twenty-one books, ranging from histories and biographies, to books on business, cricket and football. He lives with his wife in West London.

Acknowledgements
A journey of a thousand miles begins, say the Chinese, with a single step.
Back in 1992 when Nick Gordon, quite the most marvellous editor I have worked for, suggested I write about Bollywood, with Pamela Bordes as my photographer, I did not know I had taken the first step. But so it has proved.
This book has come a long way since then and I am grateful to so many people across so many lands and countries that, while I would like to thank them all, I just cannot.
I must thank David Davidar, then of Penguin India, for suggesting my name to Tempus in the first place.
Having grown up in Bombay, when it was called Bombay, and Bollywood was just Hindi cinema, I have always followed it, and the people in this book, whose lives I chronicle, were people who were part of my daily life as a child. My childhood was dominated by the making of Mughal-e Azam, and Hindi film songs were part of the surrounding sound of our life in Bombay, blaring forth from transistors, as we called them, and from every paan-shop.
Even then, writing this book has been a voyage of discovery and my journey has been made easier by various helping hands.
They include my researchers in various countries, not merely England, but in Russia, parts of Europe, the United States and, of course, India.
I am grateful to Ayaz Memon for introducing me to Subuhi Saiyad who did such a marvellous job both researching material and arranging interviews with key people. I am also grateful to Boria Majumdar for introducing me to Gagree and for her help in research in Calcutta.
I cannot thank Rachel Dwyer enough for putting me in touch with Somnath Batabyal, whose research was exemplary and particularly useful.
Many people generously gave their time and advice.
Old friends like Noel Rands, who acted in Lagaan, opened doors for me to English actors now getting acquainted with Bollywood, in particular Howard Lee, the wicket-keeper of Lagaan. Noel also did some extremely useful research for me.
My niece, Anjali Mazumder, very kindly introduced me to Stella Thomas, who did a marvellous job of helping me come to terms with Bollywood research, summarising material in a very expert way. Anjali’s mother in Canada, my sister Panna, and father, Tapan, not only sought out rare books and DVDs of films but also commented on parts of the manuscript.
My old Bombay friend, Papu Sanjgiri, was, as ever, marvellous in both answering all my many queries and also obtaining information and I am indebted to him for introducing me to Bhau Marathe, whose knowledge of Bollywood music is awesome.
Susanna Majendie, looking for all the world like a schoolgirl again, and with sharpened pencil to boot, went and obtained some very valuable material from the British Library’s India office section.
I cannot thank Melinda Scott-Manderson enough. At a most critical time, when it seemed the project might sink, she took charge of the entire production of the manuscript, marshalling forces in a manner that would defeat a Bollywood director and making sure it was done in time. Without her it would not have been. Given that the subject matter is completely