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L-6 Poets and Pancakes

- Gemini Studios was one of India's pioneering movie studios located in Chennai in the 1940s-1950s, employing over 600 people. - The document describes various roles at the studio, including the office boy who did crowd makeup, Asokamitran who collected newspaper clippings, and a legal advisor who got an actress in trouble by recording her voice without permission. - The studio employed poets but some were considered insignificant. A visit by British poet Stephen Spender was unsuccessful as his strong accent made his speech difficult to understand. The studio later hosted an anti-communist theater group whose hidden messages the owner only realized later.

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JASU GAMING
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57 views4 pages

L-6 Poets and Pancakes

- Gemini Studios was one of India's pioneering movie studios located in Chennai in the 1940s-1950s, employing over 600 people. - The document describes various roles at the studio, including the office boy who did crowd makeup, Asokamitran who collected newspaper clippings, and a legal advisor who got an actress in trouble by recording her voice without permission. - The studio employed poets but some were considered insignificant. A visit by British poet Stephen Spender was unsuccessful as his strong accent made his speech difficult to understand. The studio later hosted an anti-communist theater group whose hidden messages the owner only realized later.

Uploaded by

JASU GAMING
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Gemini Studios

Gemini Studios was one of India’s pioneer movie factories. Situated in the present day Chennai, owned by
S.S Vaasan and worked by over 600 staff, the GS made movies for Tamilnadu and other southern Indian
states. Pancake[TM] was the makeup material used by the GS.

The Office Boy


Office Boy was a grown up man in the Makeup Department of the GS. He was in charge of the crowd
makeup. He applied pancake on their faces with the help of a dipped paint brush. Though his job was quite
an easy one, the office boy considered him to be a greatly skilled artist.

Asokamitran
Asokamitran was one of the staff whose job was to collect information such as news events from
newspapers and magazines and to paste them in files. The other staff considered his job out of place and
most of them thought so high of themselves. Here are some of the interesting staffs of GS.

Legal Advisor
The legal advisor worked in the Story Department. He was a lawyer and provided legal advices to the writers
yet he was known as the illegal advisor. The following incident is one reason that gave him that name. Once
a shooting was under progress. The heroine, a highly emotional girl, got angry with the director and
producer. While the whole set stood stunned at this, the legal advisor recorded her voice without her
permission and made her listen to the playback, thus resulting the end of a rising actress.

Poets and writers


Gemini Studios had some great poets like Harindranath Chatopadhyaya and a few others. Most of the
insignificant poets considered so great of themselves. They had no great talent, no great creativity, no
political views yet they assumed the airs of the greatest poets, wasting Vaasan’s money and time. They
believed Gandhiji to be the last word of politics and had developed an aversion to Communism.

Stephen Spender
Anyway, Stephen Spender, who was once a prominent communist editor and poet from England, came to
the studio and gave his speech. His lecture was about Communism on one side and about his struggles to
establish as a poet on the other. Whatever he spoke was great, hot, exciting and inspiring, but what use, his
accent was such terrible one that none of the Gemini staff could clearly understand what Spender had
spoken. They fell into shame for not being able to understand the poet and wished not to meet him again.
Communism and MRA
Communism was a new political order that was spreading throughout the world, especially in Asian
countries. Communism preached equality of people and abolition of poverty and class divisions while it
discouraged private ownership. But Communism won a negative impression due the Capitalist countries
such as America.

MRA or Moral Rearmament Army was an international team of actors and actresses that spread anti
Communist feelings throughout the world. The MRA came to Chennai and saw how influential was Gemini
Studios in the south of India. The team got permission from Vaasan to stage their plays. Vaasan was only
happy to give them permission because he hoped that his staff would get inspiration from the international
team. But little did Vaasan know of their intentions. MRA staged their plays with hidden anticommunist
messages and went away and it was yet after some time that Vaasan realized that he had been fooled.
- The make- up room was like - was in early forties
hair cutting salon with bright - did make-up of the crowd
lights and mirrors. - joined to become an actor
THE MAKE-UP
- Headed by a Bengali first, or a screen writer, director
later by Maharashtrian, DEPARTMENT or lyric writer, was a bit poet.
Helped by an Andhraite, a - Hopes shattered, seemed
Madras Christian and Anglo- THE OFFICE frustrated.
-Burmese and a local Tamil. BOY
- Example of National Integration
- Hierarchy was followed
- Chief actors and actresses
- Assistant the second hero
- The office day of the crowd - Duty of the
writer
to cut out
newspaper
- Kothamangalam Subbu- No.2 at Inside the clippings
Gemini Studios Gemini - Everyone
thought Studio
- Always accompanied the boss him as free
- Was in story department. – Office boy
expressed
- Story department had lawyer, his anger
against SUBBU
writers and poets. Subbu at the
studio.
- Was cheerful and loyal
- Habit of being nice
- Was charitable
- Could suggest many ways of filming
A scene
- Was a poet, an amazing actor
- Had many enemies, office boy being
the main.

- mr. Vasan the boss was editor of - A tall Englishman, a poet


Tamil Weekly Ananda Vikatan. Visited the studios.
- Main prominent poets visited studio. – The boss welcomed the
poet.
- They wore khadi, were against - The poet had English
accent,
Communism 1952 Frank Buchman’s he spoke without being
Moral Re- Armament Army visited understood.
Studio. – Years after retirement,
- Hosting two hundred people of twenty nationalities was great Asokamitron saw a pile
of
Change. Books, with a book
titled the
God that failed.
- It was a collection of
essays
by six eminent writers.
- The name of the editor
was
Stephen Spender.
- The same poet who had
visited the studio.
- Cleared the mystery of
Spender’s visit.

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