1955 Walchandnagar, India

Prabhu Bhimpure

Born 1942

Walchandnagar, Maharashtra, India

Interviewed on February 8, 2024

Interviewed by Deven Kinney

For teenagers and young adults in the 15 to 25 age group, the main entertainment was only the movies. So going to a movie was a big outing, really. Especially in the 50s and 60s, there were not many other forms of entertainment. There were stage plays, of course, but they catered to a more sophisticated crowd. Movies were in general for the masses, and for both young and old people, movies were the main form of entertainment in India in the 50s and 60s. So going to a movie was really a big thing, and it was the big form of entertainment for everybody. 

There was only one movie theater in Walchandnagar. It was a very small town, so normally they would bring in one movie every week or every other week. They had to order from Pune. My father, besides being an accountant, used to manage that movie theater as well. They had a budget, so it used to take time to get really popular movies. They used to show movies only three days a week, usually on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays I think. Wednesday was a holiday, so Tuesday night movies were popular. 

I grew up in Walchandnagar until I was 16. My first movie memory was seeing Shree 420. 420 is the Penal Code in the Indian Constitution that punishes people who cheat and swindle and deal on the black market. The movie is based on these rich guys and con artists in Bombay and how they would cheat and swindle the poor. So that was the first movie I saw. It was produced by a famous director Raj Kapoor, and he was mainly known for social themes and characters. That’s why all his movies became popular in places like Russia and eastern Europe, where the exploitation of the poor by the rich was a common theme. And in the 50s and 60s in India as well, rich people would always try to exploit and squeeze the poor. All his social themes were based on those kinds of things. So he was known very famously for those social themes. By the time I went to Pune I was in college, so then we were seeing a lot of Hollywood movies. They were very popular, movies like Niagara with Marilyn Monroe. Those Hollywood movies were very popular amongst college students in places like Pune and Bombay. Even if you understood very little English, especially since movie English was spoken very fast, still people would go. 

Raj Kapoor’s movies became famous all around the world. Another one of his movies that became very famous was Awaara, which in English means vagabond. Raj Kapoor had his own production studio called R.K Films that he owned in Bombay, and he used to mainly act with an actress named Nargis, and that pair was very popular. There were rumors that she was going to marry him, but it never happened. They were just a love pair in the movies. 

In those days we had just gotten our independence and the economy was still struggling, so for the masses, the movies were cheap entertainment, and they were mainly fantasies. Movies used to be about glamor, and people liked going to see that. Actors and actresses would fall in love, or a guy would reject a rich girl and would instead marry a poor girl of his choice who he loved, which was a big deal because in real life it was mainly arranged marriages! Seeing all that fantasy and glamor was a form of escapism from daily life, which was quite hard during that time. Films were also made in different languages. Like Bollywood, Tamil Nadu had Tollywood. Every state had their own regional movies, but Hindi movies became popular nationwide. But Tamil Nadu and Kerala had big movies. Even Maharashtra would produce Marathi language movies. In spite of many Punjabi actors going in Hindi movies, Punjab had its own Punjabi language movies as well.

The music [for Shree 420] was composed by Shankar-Jaikishan, who was one of the most famous music directors of the 50s and 60s. He must have amassed at least ten Filmfare Awards, which are the equivalent to Oscars here. Filmfare was a film magazine that used to come every two weeks or so. They used to give awards every year. At the first Filmfare Awards, I think Gregory Peck came. Anyways, Shankar-Jaikishan was very famous, and his music was very melodious. In those days there used to be six or seven great music directors, and they all had different styles. Indian movies would have six to ten songs, but the actors and actresses didn’t sing them. Instead, famous singers used to be playback singers in the movies. All Indian movies, even today I think, even though you see the actors and actresses singing, it’s all playback singing, unlike in Western movies.

So like I said, every movie had about six to ten songs, and the movie would become a hit based on the songs. A producer would get a good music director, like Shankar-Jaikishan, and they would release the soundtracks before the movies were released. So all the music was recorded before, and the songs that became popular would make people go see the movie as soon as it opened in the theater. Usually the soundtracks would be released about eighteen months before the movie, and the songs would become popular on the radio. 

One more thing you have to understand is that during the 50s and 60s, there were three main actors. We talked about Raj Kapoor who was one of them, and he focused on social themes. Dilip Kumar was known as one of the best character actors. If you had to compare him to an American actor, he was like Tom Hanks, whereas Raj Kapoor used to emulate Charlie Chaplin. The third guy was very good-looking and was very popular amongst girls, and his name was Dev Anand. He used to act in mainly love movies and love marriage movies. He was as tall as Gregory Peck, and I think he used to copy Gregory Peck’s acting and hairstyle too. These were the three main actors of the 50s and 60s. They dominated the movies. 

Indian movies during this time may not have been as technologically advanced as Hollywood movies, but they were still very good movies. And the movie craze in India is still there. A South Indian movie won an Oscar last year for Best Original Song. And of course A.R. Rahman, who’s an exceptionally brilliant composer, won Best Score for Slumdog Millionaire. So in India the market has always been big. The movie industry in India has probably surpassed Hollywood at this point, especially if you combine the Hindi movies with all the regional films produced as well.