Manorama: The comedienne, vamp & the maharani of memes

Manorama, who was known for her comic and negative roles, never got her due from the  Hindi film industry. Now when fifteen years after her death, memes are devoted to her comic virtuosity it is emphatically tragic that she died in penury.

Hema Malini, who was ‘tortured’ by Manorama in  Ramesh Sippy’s Seeta Aur Geeta, remembers the senior actress fondly. “She was so convincing as my wicked aunt, the audience hated her for torturing poor Seeta, that was me. I remember there was a scene where she makes me undrape my saree. I was shaken after that scene. So evil on screen! But such a warm friendly human being in real life.”

Sadly the Indian moviegoing audience largely confuses the actor for the character and the character for the performance. Another brilliant actress Shashikala was hated by the public as she largely played negative characters. Sharmila Tagore once shared with me that when she and Shashikala were shooting in the wilderness and had to request a resident to let them use their loo, the resident agreed to let Sharmila in but not Shashikala.

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Lalita Pawar and Manorama too faced the same ostracism.

Manorama was bitter with Bollywood for shunning her in her later years.

When Manorama passed away On February 15, 2008, Deepa Mehta who worked with Manorama in her last film Water was not even aware of her death.

Deepa remembers Manorama as well-spoken, erudite and very intelligent. “Sometimes she used to get bitter about how Bollywood shunned her in her later years. But most of the time she’d say, ‘God is great. Deepa, never forget that’. I never forgot that.”

A casualty of Bollywood’s heartlessness towards those who are seen as not useful to the entertainment business any more, Manorama’s last celluloid work was for Mehta’s Water, in which she played the leery and vulgar widow who heads a widows’ ashram. Manorama was the happiest when she has honoured at the Thiruvananthapuram Film Festival for her contribution to Indian cinema She suffered a stroke about six months ago before she died. Interestingly, Manorama was the first and final choice to play Madhumati in Mehta’s Water.

Recalls  Deepa, “We aborted ‘Water’ in Varanasi. The entire cast changed. Only Manorama survived from the original cast. Five years later, she was on again… what a great trouper at that age! Such spirit. She shot at 40 degrees temperature in Sri Lanka. No joke for a woman her age,”

Mehta said her daughter was very fond of the late actress. “She was so lovely. My daughter Devyani really bonded well with her. Devyani was totally fascinated by Manorama’s history, her half-Irish parentage and her beginnings in Bollywood as Baby Iris, then being a heroine in Lahore and then a vamp in Mumbai. It was fascinating!”

Mehta recalls a heartwarming incident with Manorama. “After ‘Water’ got truncated in Varanasi, I had gone to Mumbai. Manorama told me, ‘You’d be happy to know I’ve got money to buy myself a second-hand Maruti car. And I’ve also got a driver. So rather than run around in three-wheelers I want you to have my car and driver whenever you’re in Mumbai.’ Can you believe this! During all this time no one in Mumbai has offered me a car and driver. She loved the chance of working in Water. That got her accolades. International audiences were shaken by her performance. They felt she was very organic. Very real.”

Beginning as a child artiste in 1926, Manorama did nearly 150 films. She had slowed down considerably and was very much out of the groove, emerging once in a while as she did in Mahesh Bhatt’s Junoon in 1992.

Bhatt tells a poignant story of Manorama’s impoverished state. “When Manorama was paid for her work, she sighed and said, ‘Today I’ll be able to take a bath’.”

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and Instagram.