The first family of Indian cinema, the Kapoors, have had several superstars in the family, and it all began with Prithviraj Kapoor.

In a recent interview with Hindustan Times, his sister Shanta Kapoor Dhawan shared how he got into acting. He did theatre in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad) and Peshawar, and later quit his law course to join Grant Anderson Theatre Company in Calcutta. There, he was praised for his role of Laertes in Hamlet. But the company shut down. “Those were times of struggle,” says 90-year-old Shanta, adding, “Bhapa would later tell us that six actors would share one blade to shave. But soon he was offered a job by BN Sircar of New Theatres, who had also discovered KL Saigal, at a salary of Rs 60 a month; it was raised to Rs 250 and the next raise was to to Rs 500. With such a handsome salary for those times, Bhapa brought his family to Calcutta.”

She recalls, “We were allowed to go for an occasional film and we usually chose Laurel and Hardy films. We loved to read comic books, and Raj would often mimic the tramp act of Charlie Chaplin which was to be his trademark as Indian cinema’s first showman. The 1941 film ‘Sikandar’ made Bhapa a big star.”

But that was a fate reserved only for the men in her family. “I would often accompany Bhapa on his tasks out, and one day he went to Babu Rao Patel, editor-publisher of FilmIndia magazine. After their talk was over, the man glanced at me and said that he could get me into films. At this, Bhapa hurried me out and later scolded me for making myself look beautiful,” she remembers.

“(Girls weren’t allowed to act in our family) because girls were exploited in the film world and it became necessary to have a sugar daddy. So my father and brother must have trembled up there in the skies seeing the great grand-daughter’s (Karisma Kapoor) act of ‘Sarkaye Lo Khatiya Jada Lage’. But times have changed, and no one seems to mind it now.”

H/T: Hindustan Times

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