Helen, Queen of the Nautch Girls

Helen, Queen of the Nautch Girls
@Asim Deb

With the release of Bollywood film Dil, Daulat Duniya in the year 1972, the Hazel-Eyed-Chic-Sleek-gorgeously glamorous twinkle-toed charmer of the silver screen incidentally finished the 500th film of her career. Congratulations on a 5th century score! Perhaps, it was a record all over the world for any film artist.

This was the caption that precipitates Helen, dancer superstar of Indian cinema, bursting onto the screen in a cacophony of jangles and spangles. Helen, Queen of the Nautch Girls, a half-hour documentary, sketches a portrait of the public and private personae of the all-singing, all-dancing deity of the most prolific film industry in the world. “I could never walk on the streets. I had to wear a veil. They used to go berserk when they saw me.” – Helen

The short 31 minute documentary Helen, Queen of the Nautch Girls (1973), made with a modest cost of $17,000 only, was a homage to the Indian movie dancer Helen, who may possibly hold the highest regards as a person, and also the most famous dancer, and beloved of all. A nautch girl in India is one who specializes in demonstrating a wide variety of popular dances. Directed and narrated by Anthony Korner, this portrait was written by James Ivory who had worked with Helen in the unforgettable opening sequence in Bombay Talkie (1970). In that scene, Helen, accompanied by numerous chorus girls, performs a dance on the keyboards of a giant typewriter while flirting and singing a duet with her co-star, Shashi Kapoor.

In the course of the documentary “Queen of the Nautch Girls”, we learn that Helen had an American father and a Burmese mother and that the family had to flee to India during WWII when the Japanese invaded Burma. She was born Helen Richardson-Khan on October 21, 1939 in Burma. Her father died during WWII and her mother was forced to leave Burma and flee to India with little Helen and the rest of her children.

…we trekked alternately through wilderness and hundreds of villages, surviving on the generosity of people, for we were penniless, with no food and few clothes. Occasionally, we met British soldiers who provided us with transport, found us refuge and treated our blistered feet and bruised bodies and fed us. By the time we reached Dibrugarh, our group had been reduced to half. Some had fallen ill and left behind, some died of starvation and disease. My mother miscarried along the way. The survivors were admitted to the Dibrugarh hospital for treatment. Mother and I had been virtually reduced to skeletons and my brother’s condition was critical. We spent two months in hospital. When we recovered, we moved to Calcutta, and sadly my brother died there due to smallpox”

Helen’s mother could get a nursing job but not enough money on her own to support her family, so Helen left school and started working in films to help with the family’s financial burden. Helen was introduced to Bollywood when a family friend, an actress Cuckoo, helped her find jobs as a as a chorus girl or back-up dancer, in films Shabistan (1951) and Awaara (1951). Then she was soon working regularly in short roles and featured as a solo dancer in films such as Alif Laila (1954) and Hoor-e-Arab (1955), as a street singer in Mayurpankh (1954). Her big breakthrough role came in 1958 when she was only 19 years old in the Bollywood film Howrah Bridge (1958), performing with the song “Mera Naam Chin Chin Chu” in Shakti Samanta’s film Howrah Bridge. It was a difficult time for the family that made her such a tireless, hard-working performer (she often worked in two long daily shifts and with only a brief break for lunch between morning and evening).

As the sixties approached she was becoming a recognizable name in the Bollywood film industry, and in the following decade. Then, in a career spanning 70 years, she appeared in over 1000 films making her a prolific performer in the Indian cinema, an amazing accomplishment for any performer. She received two Filmfare Awards. In 1999 she received the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Awad. In 2009, Helen was awarded with the Padma Shri award. A book about Helen was published by Jerry Pinto in 2006, titled The Life and Times of an H-Bomb, which in the year 2007, went on to win the National Film Award for Best Book on Cinema.

The dancer’s mass appeal in India was best described by Robert Emmet Long in his book The Films of Merchant Ivory: “The dance numbers she performs sometimes involve melodramatic situations that may provoke a smile (in one Helen taunts a black convict locked in a cage who is driven to desperation to get at her); but one’s reactions are actually more complicated than this. Helen manages to generate a sense of excitement (at times perhaps even of danger) as the lid of Pandora’s box is opened, and the many shapes of forbidden desires and fantasy are released. Reinforced by the surging rhythms of background music, and the camera’s powerful concentration on her….Helen draws one into a dream world.”

Helen, Queen of the Nautch Girls is a wonderful introduction to the genre and one of its leading stars. In 1999, Canadian filmmaker Eisha Marjara made an independent experimental film entitled Desperately Seeking Helen that was a highly personal account of her search in India for the famous superstar among other things.

It would have been easy to poke fun at the crass kitsch of the Bollywood hit parade that opens the film, but James Ivory’s socio-artistic commentary (narrated by director Anthony Korner) sets a detached, almost disinterested tone, lending the documentary a gloss of seriousness. As Helen shimmies through a series of film clips in a blur of noisy colour, she and the phenomenon of her popularity are verbally examined.

The strict ethical code with kissing and even affectionate touching expressly forbidden by the censors, the dance assumes a surrogate sexuality that the characters themselves cannot consummate. It is difficult to imagine her here, in the privacy of her dressing room, splashing herself around the gaudy cabaret film sets with their aura of promiscuity and ostentatious theatricality. Yet this in itself is testament of sorts to her professional dedication. She wants to be taken seriously as an artist, and Ivory and Korner allow her that dignity, despite the whimsical undertones. They seem to have found in her the core dignity that carries off – even vindicates – the kitsch and glitz of an entire nation, and justifies the most popular genre in motion picture history.

SOURCES:
The Films of Merchant Ivory by Robert Emmet Long (Abrams), Cinebeats, Filmiholic.
http://www.merchantivory.com/film/helenqueenofthenautchgirls
https://cinebeats.wordpress.com/2007/09/12/helen-queen-of-the-nautch-girls/
http://filmiholic.com/helen-queen-of-the-nautch-girls/
http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/cteq/helen_queen_nautch/
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/430514%7C412894/Helen-Queen-of-the-Nautch-Girls.html

Helen, Queen of the Nautch Girls:
Narration & Direction: Anthony Korner
Producer: Ismail Merchant
Screen Writer: James Ivory
Editor: Andrew Page
Photographer: Anwar Siraj, R.M. Rao

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