Umasashi

One other earliest stars of the New Theatres' of Calcutta, Uma was born in 1915 in a poor Brahmin family of Calcutta. Her father was Nilmani Chattopadhyay and her mother Radharani. Nilmani hailed from Dacca, East Bengal, British India but was settled in Calcutta. As a child Uma received very little formal education by reasons of poverty but received training in music and dance from an early age because this was easier to fetch money for the impoverished family. Her first teacher in music and dance was Satkari Ganguly. It was Ganguly who took Uma to the stage, where she started work as a group dancer, working in Minerva, Alfred and finally in Russa Theatres. After sometime, she played minor roles in the stage as well and soon became part of a touring group from Calcutta to different parts of undivided Bengal like Chittagong, Cox's Bazar performing on the stage. It was from Russa Theatres' that she was chosen to act in films. Her first screen appearance was in Bangabala (1929) in the role of Subarna. It was a silent film. She had to quit the stage because the authorities would not allow their paid staff to work in films. The other films that followed were Bigraha (1930) where she played Ranima and Abhishek (1931). These were silent, too. Around this period, Umasashi started recording songs for Columbia. At a later stage when she was doing sound films, she shifted to Hindustan Musical Products and remained their exclusive singing artiste. In gramophone records for both Columbia and Hindustan, she was credited as Smt. Uma Devi. Her first sound film was Dena Paona (1931) where she acted in a crowd scene of Gajan and also sang a song Baba Apan Bhola Moder Pagal Chhele along with Miss Abhabati. She was trained for the song by Pankaj Kumar Mallick. The next year she played Rami in Chandidas (1932) of New Theatres and thereby earned for herself a permanent place in the Bengali screen apart from being recognised as a major leading lady of New Theatres. Old cine lovers stil