Devika rani biography sample paper

"I hope that I have managed to establish who Devika Rani really was. A rebellious and unusually talented and beautiful woman, a great actress and studio head who changed the course of Indian cinema in many ways, despite her intense personal suffering.

A pioneer then and now," writes author Kishwar Desai of "The Longest Kiss" (Westland), the biography of India's first international superstar in the 1930s and 1940s.

"I hope this book will be of help to others who care to study this very important phase in Indian cinema, with its passion, idealism and entrepreneurship, in the days before it became a business like any other," adds Desai, whose husband, Lord Meghnad Desai is a lifetime member of Britain's House of Lords.

Astonishingly beautiful, prodigiously talented, and a great-grand-niece of Rabindranath Tagore, Devika Rani (1908-94) earned rave reviews for her first film, "Karma