Indian cinema on stamps

 

 

Hi, sorry to have been away so long, too many things in the going. This one took me some time assembling and researching, but was great fun! When I was a boy, my brother François and I used to collect stamps, mostly French ones of course, and I still retain names of people and places that appeared on the little slips of sticky paper, immortalised by their colourful and evocative drawings. We had great moments buying them, sorting them out, calculating their prices and treasuring them. They're now somewhere at my other brother's home, I think, he kept the collection as he left home later than we did.

Anyway here's the lot of the Indian cinema stamps. Only 60 people! Can you find any more? The Indian postage service only commemorates the dead, so there are as yet no stamp for Dilip Kumar or Vijayanthimala - let's hope it stays that way for long! - the stamps where living actors are represented are all foreign ones. Some seem forged though (those Guiné-Bissau ones look strange). I have opened this post with Nutan, and so first, the Indian stamps.

Commemorative

Dadasaheb Phalke starts the list, being the director of Raja Harichandra, (1913), said to be the first Indian movie!

 

 

Directors

Jyotiprasad Agarwalla, Avichi Meiyappan, Krishnaswami Subrahmanyam

   

Guru Dutt

 

Satyajit Ray

     

Ritwik Ghatak

 

Bimal Roy 

 

Raj Kapoor

L.V. Prasad, Mehboob Khan, V. Shantaram, B.N. Reddi, S.S. Vasan

       

Producer (Harakh Chand Nahata)

   

 

Actors (deceased)

Devika Rani, Nutan, Kanan Devi, Savithri, Meena Kumari, Leila Naidu:

Nargis, Hema Malini, Madhubala:

                                   

Padmini, Lalitha and Ragini Travancore

 Prithviraj Kapoor, Gemini Ganesan, Shivaji Ganeshan, Rajkumar:

   

N.T. Rama Rao, M.G. Ramachandran, K. L. Saigal:

       

Jaishankar (only FDC?)

  A booklet on Uttam Kumar:

 

   

The following actors (not deceased)  are not represented on Indian postage:

   

 

                       

 

 

   

 

Singers and musicians

A beautiful group of Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Mohammed Rafi, and Hemant Kumar:

Pankaj Kumar Mallick, S.D. Burman, M.S. Subbulakshmi:

    

Dinanath Mankeshkar, Ghantasala:

   

 

And one last one, from the US, said to represent "Bollywood dancing"!

And just for the fun of it, here are the films I've identified on these stamps (help me complete the list!)

Raja harichandra

Nayak

Sujata

Anari

Swades

DDLJ

Devdas

Pather panchali

Kagaaz ke phool

Mera naam joker

Awaara

Bandini

Shilpi

Uttarayan

Mother India

Roth

Woman

The cloud-capped star

Pakeezah