Skip to main content

Wanted Cultured Ladies Only!




An ad from filmindia July, 1943.
Came across above image in 'Wanted cultured ladies only!: female stardom and cinema in India, 1930s-1950s'
by By Neepa Majumdar (Google Books)
Leela Chitnis and Master Vinayak in ''Better Half'
from filmindia, January 1940
The above image (minus the caption) was recently shared on twitter by Pavan Jha. He posted it as a quiz. Quite a few comments raised the issue of 'Smoking in Indian Cinema'. I came to know about the image via Facebook where someone asked me if I knew the answer. I recalled coming across it in filmindia collection shared with me by Greta. I was able to recall it because of the appealing caption: kiss

The Kiss. Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai in Karma (1933)
Speaking of Captions...
From Filmfare, November 1989
 Speaking of Ads...
June 1982


-0-

Labels:

Comments

  1. Rohit MattooDec 7, 2011, 12:44:00 PM

    Reminded me of this ad I had seen in a major Czech newspaper ... http://twitpic.com/vumvn :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Vinayak RazdanDec 7, 2011, 3:59:00 PM

    Imagined Kanhaiyalal reading that out in hindi. The horror! The horror!

    ReplyDelete
  3. vFeb 4, 2013, 5:20:00 PM

    Hi, I'm trying to write a paper on the idea of the 'respectable' actress of the 20th century, focusing on a figure like Devika Rani, perhaps. I was wondering if you had any idea where I could get my hands on some old magazines like Filmindia or Indian Film or Rangbhoomi, or posters from the 30s. You always post such great stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Vinayak RazdanFeb 4, 2013, 5:48:00 PM

    @V

    I get a lot of these queries from people doing film studies. I realize finding original material is one of the biggest problems these studies face. So I am posting a generic response. Things I tell most of them.

    For me the interest was digging up material related to censorship. I here there is stuff...lots of magazines archived and accessible at Pune archive. Since most of these are not available online. I looked at buying stuff from online vendors...mostly on ebay. There are quite a sellers. I did post of my purchases from vendors named 'auctionz_unlimited' and 'shoryaa'. You can try your luck there. Some of the rare material isn't easy on the wallet but a lot of material is affordable.

    It's not much. But I hope this helps.

    ReplyDelete
  5. vFeb 5, 2013, 2:45:00 AM

    Thanks I'll check it out.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I always like to hear back :)
However, irrelevant comments and irrelevant links will not be published. Needless to say, same goes for abusive comment and spam. Leaving back links related to the topic is encouraged. I know it can be tempting but try not to leave your email ids, phone nos and CVs in the comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Famous Old Faces of Doordarshan

Some people recall the faces and some people recall the names. Here are images of some of the famous readers and presenters of Doordarshan down the years. If you recognize any of them, leave a comment.
[Update 1: Most of the faces now have names thanks to helpful comments by olio-gallimaufry]
[Update 2: Included image of one of the earliest presenters, Gopal Kaul. Send in generously from personal collection by son, Ashutosh Kaul. Sept, 2010.]
[Major Update 3: Got a tip-off about a documentary about the famous faces of Doordarshan from the makersof“The Golden Trail , DD@50 :Special feature on Golden Jubilee of Doordarshan” from which these caps were taken. I managed to catch the incredible documentary and am adding some more faces/name and part of the docu here. New ones can be found after the image of Narotam Puri. 30th Oct, 2010]

 Pratima Puri. Believed to be the first Doordarshan reader.
179 comments
Read more

Indian Cigarette Vintage Ads

He put a cigarette in his mouth and, as a matter of silent routine, offered one to Gwyn, who said ‘No thanks.”Richard looked at him.”I packed it in.”"You what?”"I stopped. Three days ago. Cold. That’s it. You just make the life choice.”

Richard looked up and inhaled needfully. He gazed at his cigarette. He didn’t really want to smoke it. He wanted to eat it. Almost the only thing that he still liked about Gwyn was that he still smoked…Paradoxically, he no longer wanted to give up smoking: what he wanted to do was take up smoking. Not so much to fill the little gaps between cigarettes with cigarettes (there wouldn’t be time, anyway) or to smoke two cigarettes at once. It was more that he felt the desire to smoke a cigarette even when he was smoking a cigarette. The need was and wasn’t being met…

While it would always be true and fair to say that Richard felt like a cigarette, it would now be doubly true and fair to say it. He felt like a cigarette. And he felt like a cigaret…
21 comments
Read more

Space City Sigma, 1989

A strange new deadly creature has sneaked aboard the ship. The latest maneuver of  Zakhakoo to take down Commander Tara and his city, the last hurdle to his plans of adding earth to his galactic kingdom and the universe. This time he sent a small Blob, strangely, much resembling a stinky wet Upla, a throbbing pack of  cow-dung . The Blob is given to jumps onto its unsuspecting victims and sucks the life force out of them. Soon, this 'death-on-contact-with-skin' creature starts making victims out of helpless citizens of the Space City who have no clue about the nature of these new deaths. As the word slowly spreads,there is mayhem, in this mayhem the Blob zeros in on what could be its most prized victim - Shakti. As a doors open (automatically, woosh-pause-woosh), Shakti walks in only to be attacked slyly by the Blob. In the manner of its previous killings, this time too, Blob goes for the face, sticking to the face of Shakti who for a moment seems to be in the grips of death …
56 comments
Read more