Khursheed Bano

:"This is about the Indian performer. For people so surnamed, see Khurshid."Khursheed Bano (Urdu: خورشید بانو) (April 14, 1914 - April 18, 2001) was an Pakistani singer & actress, and a pioneer of the Indian cinema.

Biography

She was born Irshad Begum in the village of Choonian, in Kasur District, (in British India, later Pakistan). She made her debut as Shehla in the silent film "Eye For An Eye" (1931) and some of her earlier films were released between 1931 and 1942, a period during which she went unnoticed. Khursheed acted in a number of films for Ranjit Movietone and her leading men included K.L. Saigal, Motilal, Jairag, and Isharilal. "Tansen" (1943), with music composed by Khem Chandra Prakash, was a high point in her acting career. She became known both as an actress and a singer. Her career ran through the 1930s and 1940s. Her last film in India was "Papeeha Re" (1948), which was a great hit, prior to her migration to Pakistan, leaving her mark in the Indian film industry. Khursheed migrated to Pakistan after the independence, with her husband and manager Lala Yakub, who was an occasional actor and member of the Bhati Gate Group, Lahore, where she settled down in Karachi, Sind, Pakistan. She worked in two films in 1956, "Fankar" and "Mandi". "Mandi" attracted some attention because of Khursheed, but because of technical shortcomings including poor direction, neither Khursheed as singer nor Rafiq Ghaznavi's musical score were able to produce the hoped-for ticket sales. "Fankar" was produced by Robert Malik, a teacher at a Christian missionary high school . The film also lagged in commercial success. In the face of these problems, and personal ones, she divorced Yakub. She remarried in 1956 to Yusuf Bhaimia, an admirer of her work, entrepreneur in the shipping business, and eventually a philanthropist. After her marriage to Mr. Bhaimia, she appeared in few PTV shows. A number of private shows were also held by her admirers and by private institutions, which she attended. Khursheed died on April 18, 2001 in Karachi, four days after her 87th birthday.