Gurudas Banerjee, also known as Gurudas Bandyopadhyay,[1] is an Indian stage and film actor who was active from the 1940s through the 1980s.[2] As an actor, he commonly played holy men, especially the 19th century Bengali mystic Sri Ramakrishna, a role he was said to "almost monopolize." He acted in more than 80 films, mostly in Bengali. With his wife, actress Molina Devi, he also directed a Calcutta-based theatre troupe, M. G. Enterprises.
Biography
Gurudas Banerjee had his stage debut in 1948 at Calcutta's Kalika Theatre in the role of Sri Ramakrishna in Yugadevata.[3] He continued acting in theatre and cinema until the 1980s.
Banerjee married Molina Devi (1917-1977), who has been characterized as "one of the finest actresses of Indian theatre and cinema."[4]: 275 Together, they operated their own touring theatre, M. G. Enterprises,[5]: 688 which "specialized in commercial productions of devotional drama"[4]: 275
in which Banerjee played the role of Sri Ramakrishna and other holy men.
Roles
Gurudas Banerjee acted in a variety of roles, very commonly as Sri Ramakrishna, which he played on both stage and in film.[5]: 688
Other roles that Banerjee played in film included
Sadhak Bamakhyapa (Sadhak Bamakshyapa, 1958; Joy Maa Tara, 1978),[6][7]
Gobinda, Husband Of Chandi (Swayamsiddha, 1947),
Ramola's Father (Sare Chuattar, 1953),[8]
Jitu, Anita's Father (Ekti Raat, 1956),[8]
Pishemashai (Indranath, Srikanta O Annadadidi, 1959),
Neepa's Father (Mouchak, 1975),[8] and
Agniswar's Father-in-law (Agniswar, 1975).[8]
From the 1950s through the 1970s, Gurudas Banerjee commonly portrayed Ramakrishna in the Bengali Theatre and films. Beginning in the late 1940s, "he almost monopolized this role [of Ramakrishna] as a specialist, both on the stage and on the screen,"[5]: 688 and was still portraying Ramakrishna in the late-1970s.[3] Sushil Mukherjee explains that the drama Jugadevata, which debuted on the Calcutta stage on 19 November 1948,
was a devotional drama... on the life of the Saint of Dakshineswar [Ramakrishna] [that] became immensely popular and established two artistes who became wholly identified with the two characters they represented. These were Gurudas Banerjee who was seen as Sri Ramkrishna and Molina Devi who appeared as Rani Rasmoni, the founder of the famous Bhabatarini (Kali) temple at Dakshineswar. Since their appearance in Jugadevata at Kalika in 1948 Gurudas and Molina have appeared in the characters of these two persons in a number of other plays, both on the stage and on the screen....[5]: 288
Films in which Banerjee played the role of Ramakrishna included Vidyasagar(1950),Rani Rashmoni (1955), Mahakavi Girish Chandra (1956), Bireswar Vivekananda (1964), and Jata Mat Tata Path (1979).
Theatrical plays in which Banerjee played Ramakrishna included Jugadebata (1948), Thakur Sri Ramakrishna (1955), and Nata Nati (1975).
In fact he was the only actor to play roles of all the prominent Shaakto (Devotee of Goddess Shakti) mystics of the 18th and 19th Century Bengal, namely Sadhak Ramprasad, Kamalakanta Bhattacharya, Shri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa and Sadhak Bamakhyapa.
Reception
According to Sushil Mukherjee, in the many screen and stage appearances since 1948 in which Banerjee and Molina Devi have played Ramakrishna and Rani Rashmoni together, they "have carried the audience with them in every performance."[5]: 288
In 1966, The Illustrated Weekly of India mentioned Banerjee's troupe's performance in a review of the 1965-66 theatre season in Delhi.[9]
The Weekly stated that
Milan Samity of Delhi sponsored the M. G. Enterprise of Calcutta, who brought two plays, Thakur Shri Ramakrishna and Baikunther Will, and an able company of actors. The credit for composing Thakur Shri Ramakrishna, round the story of Rani Rashmoni, and for bringing this legendary figure to life on the stage, goes to Molina Devi and Gurudas, who headed the company.... It is not easy to put across a religious theme, but Molina and Gurudas did so convincingly, helped greatly by the telling effects of light and music.[9]
Filmography
Gurudas Banerjee acted in more than 80 films, mostly in Bengali, as listed here (including year released, and role if available; all films in Bengali unless otherwise noted):[10]
Further details on selected films appear in the table below.[13] Films known to be dubbed versions of other films have not been listed. Any films known to be multilinguals (separately filmed in multiple languages) are explicitly noted as multilinguals.[14][15]
Source;[5]: 322, 688 Dilip Roy (hero), Lily Chakraverti (heroine)
References
^Ananda Lal The Oxford companion to Indian theatre 2004- Page 275 "Trained in acting by Aparesh Mukhopadhyay, she debuted in a silent movie as an 8- year-old. She began her stage career, like many of ... She teamed up with Gurudas Bandyopadhyay, her second husband, to form a troupe, M. G. Enterprise, which specialized in commercial productions of devotional drama where he enacted Ramakrishna and other holy men. She made quite a stir as the lead in the ..."
^Sushil Kumar Mukherjee, Suśīla Mukhopādhyāẏa The story of the Calcutta theatres, 1753-1980 (1982), Page 342: "The cast included Gurudas Banerjee (Ramakrishna), Kartick Banerjee (Girish Ghose), Santosh Dutt (Danakali), ... "
^ abGurudas Banerjee played Ramakrishna in the film Jata Mat Tata Path (1979). Mukherjee's (1982) Story states that Gurudas Banerjee was "a popular actor [who] made his stage debut at Kalika in the late-forties of the [20th] century appearing as Sri Ramakrishna in Yugadevata (1948). Since then he has almost monopolized the role as a specialist, both on the stage and on the screen. His recent appearance in this role was in Nata Nati at Rangana (1975).... He has his own touring theatre, M. G. Enterprise..." (p. 688)
^Information in the table of selected films is derived, as noted in the final column, from film entries in YouTube, or from Gurudas Banerjee at IMDB, GomoloArchived 20 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine, or CITWF.
^Some Indian films are known as "multilinguals," having been filmed in similar but non-identical versions in different languages. According to Rajadhyaksha and Willemen in the Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (1994), in its most precise form, a multilingual is "a bilingual or a trilingual [that] was the kind of film made in the 1930s in the studio era, when different but identical takes were made of every shot in different languages, often with different leading stars but identical technical crew and music." They wrote that in seeking to assemble the Encyclopedia, it they often found it "extremely difficult to distinguish multilinguals in this original sense from dubbed versions, remakes, reissues or, in some cases, the same film listed with different titles, presented as separate versions in different languages.... it will take years of scholarly work to establish definitive data in this respect."
Source: Rajadhyaksha, Ashish; Paul Willemen (1994). Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema. New Delhi: Oxford University Press; British Film Institute (London). ISBN019-563579-5.
^At present, no pairs of films listed in the table are known to be multilinguals; however, this category has been added for clarify, and to accommodate possible additional information (12 Feb 2013)
^The actor appearing as Sri Ramakrishna in the last two minutes of Vidyasagar (1950) is readily identifiable as the same as the actor appearing in the role of Sri Ramakrishna in Mahakavi Girish Chandra (1956), as viewable in the State Awards for Mils Programme (1956)Archived 22 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine (page 9) (accessed 12 Feb 2013).
