The first Indian Actress was a man named Salunke and The first woman Indian actress Kamlabai Gokhale

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Salunke in 'Lanka Dhan' (1917)

Back then no woman, even the prostitutes and the dancing girls  was willing  to  Face the camera;which was akin to laying bare at a public square.

The story goes like this: Around 1913, Dadasaheb Phalke was planning to make his magnum opus – a mythological feature film titled ‘Raja Harishchandra’. But before he could start, he needed to find a young woman who could take on the role of female lead. This proved to be the tricky part. 

Back then no woman, even the prostitutes and the dancing girls that he approached, was willing to sell his soul to the devil.  Facing the camera was akin to laying bare at a public square. 

Dadasaheb Phalke’s grand plans for cinema were stalled. Then one night while dining at a restaurant, some say while sipping a cup of tea there, Phalke found his heroine, an impressive womanly beauty, working the kitchen as a lowly help. Dadasaheb Phalke made an offer that was promptly accepted, and in this manner on a monthly salary of Rs.10 (or according to some, Rs. 15 with Rs. 10 being the salary of the cook's assistant) 

 Phalke's film got an actress and India got its first heroine, a man named Salunke who ruled the silver screen for almost a decade spanning the entire era of Phalke’s mythological dramas. Riding on the success of these films and the slow rising public approval for the new medium of cinema, a celluloid Star, arguable India’s first, was born – Anna Salunke.
 
It is interesting to note that till recently it was common for a man to do the role of woman in local nautankis, religious dramas. Another interesting feature of these dramas was that often a single person would have to play multiple roles, a trend quite common in (one can say still) popular in Indian films at one time.

  Salunke in raja Harischandra.
(And yes, that would be first bath on screen by an Indian actress)

In ‘Raja Harishchandra’ Salunke played the female role of Taramati as well as the male roles of Bhalchand and Dattaraj. It seems Salunke was quite apt at playing multiple roles, and Phalke quite content with a small crew of actors.

 In Phalke’s Lanka Dahan (The Burning of Lanka, 1917) Salunke played Sita as well as Ram, a feat that can’t be replicated in modern times without having the film falling under comic genre instead of mythological. But back then these mytho-drama films starring Salunke were setting box office and public imagination ablaze.

 However, when public appetite for mytho-dramas was full and after they developed a taste for socio-dramas that were now being made, and maybe because of  
arrival of real women on screen (Phalke's Mohini Bhasmasur from 1913 had mother-daughter duo Durgabai Gokhale and Kamlabai Gokhale), 

Salunke, in a story of first fall from stardom in India, slowly faded from public memory.
This was the story of androgynous beginning of the Indian Heroine - the rise of a man as a woman through a spell induced by devil’s magic eye.
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India’s first real woman actress
  Kamlabai (source)


Kamlabai Gokhale

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kamalabai Gokhle
Kamalabai Gokhale.jpg
Kamlabai Gokhale (born Kamlabai Kamath), was the first actress of Indian cinema, along with her mother Durgabai Kamat.

Personal life

She was the daughter of Durgabai Kamat, who was the first female actress of Indian cinema and Anand Nanoskar, a professor of history at the J.J. School of Art. She married Raghunathrao Gokhale and had three children. Chandrakant Gokhle is one of them, who is the father of Vikram Gokhale (occasionally credited as Vikram Gokhle) and Mohan Gokhale both are well known Indian film, television and stage actors. Kamlabai was 25 when she became a widow, pregnant with her third child.


Kamlabai Kamat (Gokhale) with her first child Lalaji

Kamlabai Kamat (Gokhale) with her first child Lalaji
Kamlabai Kamat (Gokhale) with her first child Lalaji

Career

Her first stage appearance was at the age of four. Around 1912-1913 Dadasaheb Phalke, the pioneering film-maker of India, was casting for his film Mohini Bhasmasur and he choose Kamlabai for the lead. Durgabai was Parvati. Phalke had been forced to use a young male cook, Salunke, to play the female lead in his earlier film, Raja Harishchandra, for lack of an actress. By the time she was 15, Kamlabai had become a celebrity. The following year she married Raghunathrao Gokhale. He had been with the Kirloskar Natak Company where he usually performed female roles. But his voice was breaking and so he moved to his brother’s company, which was the same one where Kamlabai and her mother were employed. The young couple was cast as the new lead pair of the company. In the 1930s, Kamlabai worked under Veer Savarkar in the play Ushaap, which focussed on the plight of Harijans. Kamalabai worked in around 35 movies. Her last film was Gehrayee (1980).

Kamlabai Kamat (Gokhale) with her first child Lalaji

Kamlabai Kamat (Gokhale) with her first child Lalaji
Kamlabai Kamat (Gokhale) with her first child Lalaji

Kamlabai Kamat (Gokhale) photographed in her later years on January 31, 1995

Kamlabai Kamat (Gokhale) photographed in her later years on January 31, 1995
Kamlabai Kamat (Gokhale) photographed in her later years on January 31, 1995

Kamlabai Kamat (Gokhale) photographed in her later years on January 31, 1995

Kamlabai Kamat (Gokhale) photographed in her later years on January 31, 1995
Kamlabai Kamat (Gokhale) photographed in her later years on January 31, 1995


Filmography

References

  1. ^ "Entertainment Bureau | Kamala Bai Gokhale | First Indian actress". Entertainmentbureau.in. 2012-06-07. Retrieved 2012-09-30.
  2. ^ "History of Indian Cinema". Cinemaofmalayalam.net. 1913-04-21. Retrieved 2012-09-30.
  3. ^ "First Lady Of The Silver