SHALOM, BOLLYWOOD

In February 2006, Florence Ezekiel Nadira died in a Mumbai hospital. That same week, thousands of miles away in Melbourne, Danny Ben-Moshe chanced upon her obituary. The interest it sparked would drive an 11-year search and culminate in a documentary on Hindi cinema’s once-lauded — and since forgotten — Jewish celebrities.

Ben-Moshe, an adjunct professor at Melbourne’s Deakin University, is also a documentary filmmaker and recipient of the Walkley Award, Australia’s top prize for documentaries. For his current baby, Shalom Bollywood: The Untold Story of Indian Cinema, he’s seeking $20,000 through a crowdfunding campaign on indiegogo.com.

“Given the times we live in today, Shalom Bollywood needs all the help it can get,” says BenMoshe. “As opposed to Hollywood, where Jews mostly worked behind the camera or as producers and played down their heritage in a then-increasingly anti-Semitic world, Indian Jews had no such compulsions. The name changes were more to induce familiarity with Indian audiences rather than religious anxiety.”

So Florence Ezekiel was known as Nadira. She was a staple in Raj Kapoor productions and is one of many Jewish actresses featured in Shalom Bollywood.

Others include silent film doyenne Sulochana (real name Ruby Myers), Pramila (Esther Victoria Abraham, also the first Miss India), Arati Devi (Rachel Sofaer) and Rose (below, who went by only one name). There’s also David Abraham Cheulkar, one of Indian cinema’s most popular character actors ever, best known for Boot Polish (1954) and Gol Maal (1979), and Raj Kapoor’s publicist, Bunny Reuben.

“David was also a prominent presenter at the Filmfare awards,” says film columnist and historian Deepak Mahaan. “While Ameen Sayani would be the main compere, David was the raconteur, interviewing celebrities as they milled into Shanmukhananda Hall for the ceremony.”

And while Pramila went on to co-produce films in the 1930s and ’40s with actor-husband Kumar (who was Muslim by birth), no Indian Jewish celebrity reached the heights that Sulochana did, says film historian