For friends well familiar with the film journalism in India from the early era of 1930s-50s, the name Baburao Patelneeds no introduction as he was one of the pioneer film journalists who started it all in the mid thirties of the last century. Also a producer-director of few films made in the 40s, Baburao Patel was the Editor and Publisher of India's first film magazine called FILM INDIA.
The magazine enjoyed a clear monopoly in the trade for a long period of time (decades), due to which its published content was considered to be quite important as well as influential among the film industry. Hugely famous for its bold, witty and acidic reviews on the new Hindi films & its performances, the reviewer Baburao Patel was the most detested as well as the most popular, in demand journalist of that initial era. Though his writings were said to be based on his own personal likes and dislikes, yet his views were feared to be decisive for a film or a star eventually and enjoyed a ‘say’ of their own.
Apart from this controversial image in the trade, Baburao Patel’s pen was loved & appreciated by the readers due to its entertaining characteristic of using simple & straight words without any hesitation, fear or regret. He used to openly criticize and make spoofs of many reputed film-makers in his reviews and there are several stories famous about this distinctive feature of his art in the trade circles. But along with this, his articles also had an intellectual value, well supported by some valid logical deductions about the medium.
Later as more magazines came in to share the same space, Baburao Patel decided to launch a national magazine in place of FILM INDIA in the 60s titled MOTHER INDIA, which was more inclined towards politics and the national issues of those times instead of cinema. And many readers of that era still miss the wicked pen of Baburao Patel since then.
As an example of his famous wit just sample what Late Shammi Kapoor himself wrote in his official site, about Baburao Patel’s views on Prithviraj Kapoor………..and he wrote,
"There is no place in the films for uncouth brawny Pathans who think they can make it as actors". This is an observation made by Baburao Patel, Editor and Publisher of the top Cinema magazine of the 30's, 40's and 50's, Film India, about Prithviraj Kapoor.
Prithviraj in his reply to Film India, said, "Baburao, do not provoke this Pathan. If there is no place for me in the Indian films I shall swim across the seven seas to Hollywood and make it there as an actor".Prithviraj did not need to go to Hollywood. That is History!
Now coming to the basic purpose of this write up, the interested readers can find many articles on the celebrated personality of Baburao Patel on several websites by easily searching the net. But here, I personally wished to share those precious reviews of his, as it is, in their original format, in the shape of scanned images giving the reader that nostalgic feel of the gone era. So this is probably the beginning of a series in my “Vintage Magazines, Books and Print Material” section at Bobbytalkscinema, where I would try to share those scanned pages of Baburao Patel’s reviews published in his FILM INDIA magazine in the era of 1940s & 50s.
And as the first share of the series, here is ‘A Baburao Patel Review’ of the famous hit film BAAZI released in 1951. It was a Navketan films release, directed by Guru Dutt, which was also written by Balraj Sahni and Guru dutt together (which is in fact another lesser known fact related to the film). BAAZI featured Dev Anand, Geeta Bali, Kalpana Kartik, Roopa Verman, Johny Walker and many other known artists. But here particularly study the kind of words used by Baburao for both Kalpana Kartik and Roop Verman together.
To read it clearly just click at the picture given to open it in its original size and have an enjoyable journey back in time to the 1950s.
(The article scan is from FILM INDIA magazine's August 1951 issue.)
Cheers!
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