In general, it is the men who last long and the women who fade. In no other cinema anywhere in the world has a dancer worked for 30 years, vamping three generations of Hindi film stars. If Helen is not seen as a legend, then that can only be the myopia of the film industry and society. Far lesser performers and bit players - from cinematographers to music directors - have succeeded, but people are still wary of giving her that tag. The funny thing is, despite her years in the industry, Helen is still to be looked at as a legend. Kiran Desai: 'Human warmth is an innate part of India' Helen was needed to show that the heroine was pure and she was needed to show that the hero was good. And even when the comic comes courting - and Helen was wooed on screen by every joker from Rajendranath to Mehmood - his questionable masculinity throws the hero's virility into clearer focus. The hero's refusal to be seduced, the villain's willingness to go along with Helen's call to pleasure made the dichotomy clearer. Melodrama is chiaroscuro the darker the blacks and greys, the whiter the whites. There's that old saw: You can't have light if you don't have darkness. Without her as a foil, and without her fall from grace in a majority of her films, the hero's victory wouldn't be half as convincing. What I get from your book, above all, is the sense that Helen played a far more important part in the film industry. And as for the stars, I don't think they're ever very good at playing anyone other than themselves.
It takes an actor to play convincingly in a biopic and I can't think of a single actor who can dance. Is there anyone among the current crop of actors capable of playing Helen, if her story were to make it to film? I think the reason can only be sought (and therefore never found) in the peculiar alchemy of the interaction between audience and actor that turns some into stars and allows others to fade.
She herself has attributed her success to a combination of good genes (French father, Burmese mother, Spanish grandfather) and discipline. You cannot think of another Dilip Kumar, another Madhubala, another Amitabh Bachchan. Just to continue from where I left off�if we were to try and invent her, we would have failed because there are some people who are irreplaceable. Have you managed to figure out what gave her longevity when so many have been forgotten? She was pretty and she could dance, but so could so many others. If there were no Helen, we would have had to invent her. Helen offered a range of dangerous women, effortlessly reinventing herself as dancer, gang moll, faithless lover, Chinese spy, Spanish countess. You must have the virginal heroine and the dangerous woman. You must have the good guy and the black-hearted villain.
For melodrama to work, you must pit opposites against each other. I believe that the best of Hindi commercial cinema uses melodrama as its central theme, playing with it in different ways. If you were to try and gauge the impact Helen had on the way the Hindi film industry evolved, into what it is today, what would you credit her most for? There's Inteqaam's Mera Yeh Husn Jawaan, which is still breathtaking in its sexual audacity, and which retains the power to shock even today.Īnd there's Khamoshi: The Musical, where, as Mariamma, she becomes a legend and a grandmother and every critic sits up, takes note, and laments the shortness of her role.Ĭhetan Bhagat: 'I could be working in a call centre'
There's Prince, where she dances with Vyjayanthimala, presenting a series of Western moves against Vyjayanthimala's classicism and so defining her role as the Other Woman. There's Cha Cha Cha, her only hit as a lead, in which one of our finest dancers played a dancer who is crippled. There's Howrah Bridge, where Helen was invented with her Mera Naam Chin-Chin-Choo number, though she had been dancing for years before it. Of the 500-odd films Helen played a part in, is there any one you could call career-defining? In conversation with Senior Features Editor Lindsay Pereira, he talks about her career-defining moments and what gave her longevity when so many other stars faded away.
Jerry Pinto spent three years chronicling the rise of Bollywood screen icon Helen.