Winner of the first Miss India pageant, in 1947... Pramila...(Esther Victoria Abraham)
A Jewish Bollywood Actress who Took a Hindu name and Married a Muslim | Drama Series Indian |
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Better known by her stage name ‘Pramila’, Esther Victoria Abraham belonged to an Iraqi-Jewish community and was born in Calcutta. She was the winner of the first Miss India pageant in 1947, while she was pregnant with her fifth child. Besides modeling, she was an actress, stuntwoman, and film producer.
Esther was born in 1916 in Kolkata to Reuben Abraham, a businessman from Kolkata, and Matilda Issac, who was from Karachi. Her family was of Baghdadi-Jewish origins who settled primarily in trade route ports around the Indian Ocean and the South Chinese sea. She had three half-siblings and six siblings from her parent's marriage.
Esther attended the Calcutta Girls High School but later shifted to St James which was a co-educational institution and had a reasonable fee structure, which the family could afford. Esther understood that to be an all-rounder, she had to learn to excel in both studies and sports and become better than the boys.
She was a hockey champion and won many trophies in sports. She had a penchant for drawing and on graduating from high school, she received an arts degree from Cambridge.
On completing her high school degree she went on to become a kindergarten teacher at the Talmud Torah Boys School. Despite having done a BEd degree, she didn’t want to teach and was drawn to Hindi cinema.
Her family had a keen interest in music and dance, which attracted young Esther to the cinema. Her entry into silent movies happened by a sheer stroke of luck. Meanwhile, she got married to a Marwari theatre personality and had a son with him - Maurice Abraham. Her parents convinced her to annul the marriage and they brought up Maurice.
A chance visit to Bombay to visit her cousin Rose Ezra changed the course of her life. Director R S Chowdhary spotted her while she visited Rose who was acting in The Return of the Toofan Mail. The director thought that the tall and glamorous Esther would do greater justice to the role and she was signed after being put through a screen test.
The movie The Return of the Toofan Mail was never completed but this marked the beginning of Esther’s entry into Hindi cinema.
She stayed on in Bombay and started working with the Imperial Company. In 1936, her first movie Bhikaran hit the theatres and her anglicized Hindi was accepted and became quite the rage. After this movie, she was given the screen name ‘Pramila’ by director and producer Baburao Pendherkar.
She went on to act in movies like Ulti Ganga, Burra Nawab Sahib, Bijli, Shahzadi, Jhankar, Our Darling Daughter, Maha Maya, etc., among others that often saw her play a vamp and stunt star. She also became the first major woman film producer with 16 films under her banner Silver Productions. Morarji Desai, then Prime minister, got her arrested because she was suspected to be a spy for often traveling to Pakistan. Later it was proved that her constant travels were aimed at promoting her films.
She wore sarees with a western twist which were usually different from the traditional designs of those times. She designed, drew, and stitched her own costumes. She was a popular face in the fashion magazines of the 30s and 40s.
In 1939, she got married a second time to Syed Hassan Ali, better known by his screen name ‘Kumar’ (who played the role of the sculptor in Anarkali). Zia was a Shia Muslim and she adopted the name Shabnam Begum Ali in the nikahnama.
However, Esther remained a practicing Jew till the end. Zaidi was already married and his wife and children lived in Lucknow, but he lived with Esther for twenty-two years in Bombay.
They had a lavish lifestyle and were often seen at races and they loved fast cars. In those days, she modeled for A J Patel and got a couple of Hollywood offers, but due to the outbreak of the Second World War, they never materialized.
(Courtesy - feminisminindi...)
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