| Fearless Nadia | |
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Fearless Nadia in 11 O'Clock (1948) |
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| Born | Mary Ann Evans January 8, 1908 Perth, Western Australia |
| Died | January 9, 1996 (aged 88) Mumbai, India |
| Occupation | Film actress and stuntwoman |
| Years active | 1933–70 |
Fearless Nadia (8 January 1908 – 9 January 1996) was an Indian film actress and stuntwoman, who is most remembered the masked, cloaked adventuress in Hunterwali (The Princess and the Hunter) released in 1935 [1][2][3], which was one of the earliest female lead Indian films [4].
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Fearless Nadia was born as Mary Ann Evans on 8 January 1908 in Perth, Western Australia. She was the daughter of Scotsman Herbertt Evans, a volunteer in the British Army, and Margret. They lived in Australia, before coming to India. Mary was one year old when Herbertt's regiment was seconded to Bombay. Mary came to Bombay in 1913 at the age of five with her father. She learned horseback riding during a stay in the North-West Frontier Province and then studied ballet under Madam Astrova after returning to Bombay in the mid-1920s.
She toured India as a theatre artist and began working for Zarko Circus in 1930. She changed her name to Nadia at the insistence of an Armenian fortune-teller. She was introduced to Hindi films by Jamshed "J.B.H." Wadia who was the founder of Wadia Movietone, the behemoth of stunts and action in 1930s Bombay. At first, J.B.H. was bemused at Mary's insistence on trying out for the movies, but he took a gamble by giving her a cameo as a slave girl (in a hand-painted colour sequence that accentuated her blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes) in an early Wadia Movietone film, Desh Deepak, and then as Princess Parizaad in Noor-e-Yaman. Nadia proved a huge hit with the audience, whereupon, considering her stated skills at performing circus and other stunts, J.B.H. -- by then joined by his younger brother Homi -- chose to develop her into a star.
1935 saw the release of her breakthrough film, Hunterwali, or "Lady of the Whip", and this was when she was permanently nicknamed Hunterwali -- the role that defined her career, and made her synonymous with the genre of stunt film. Her role in the film—which had her dressed in tight, revealing clothes, tall boots, while wielding a whip—became iconic in 1930s pre-independence India, which saw no irony in a white woman espousing the rights of the Indian masses and urging them to cast off the yoke of foreign imperialism and tyranny (obviously symbolized by the British Raj). She reprised the role in Hunterwali ki Beti some years later. Perhaps her best role, the most strongly written by J.B.H., was in Diamond Queen which is also perhaps the best made of all of Nadia's films, given J.B.H.'s passion for the themes of female emancipation and anti-colonialism, and a particularly strong supporting cast that included the stalwart John Cavas (a stuntman and bodybuilder himself, with a strong screen presence); Sayani, the ubiquitous villain whose trademark mustache and mannerisms endeared him to audiences; Sardar Mansoor, who appeared in many Wadia Movietone offerings, sometimes as hero, sometimes as second lead, and who was a rather decent singer as well; and, of course, the "stunt car" Rolls-Royce ki Beti ("Daughter of Rolls-Royce") and Gunboat the Dog (who performed many a stunt and trick himself!).
Nadia's last major role was in 1967-68, when she was in her late 50s, in a James Bond spoof called Khiladi ("The Players") where she donned a variety of disguises and took top billing and performed various stunts (although less daring than previous films), accompanied by a host of other stunt actors. While the film didn't succeed hugely at the box office given that the stunt genre was an anachronism perhaps in that day and age, it was rather well made and remains worth watching as an example of 1960s sensibilities marrying stunts and social themes in Indian cinema. It is interesting to note that quite a few historians insist that the "Angry Young Man" persona of Amitabh Bachchan wouldn't have come about had it not been for the example that Nadia's films set in combining stunts with a passion for social justice.
Throughout her career, Nadia had many love affairs and was linked to men of prominence. She was married twice. From her first marriage she had a son. After she was introduced to films by Mr. Wadia, she met his younger brother Homi Wadia. Soon they fell in love with each other but they didn't get married until the early 1960s, after the death of the Wadia brothers' orthodox Parsi mother who wouldn't let her son wed a "parjat". They were married in 1961. By the time they were married, Nadia was too old to have her own children. Instead, Homi adopted Nadia's son from her previous marriage.
She died at Cumballa Hill Hospital in Bombay in 1996, one day after her 88th birthday.
In 1993, Nadia's great grandnephew, Riyad Vinci Wadia, made a documentary of her life and films, called Fearless: The Hunterwali Story, after watching the documentary at the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival, Dorothee Wenner, a German freelance writer, and film curator, wrote a book, Fearless Nadia - The true story of Bollywood's original stunt queen, which was subsequently translated to English in 2005 [5]. In 2011, the Australia India Institute at the University of Melbourne launched The Fearless Nadia Occasional Papers. These are original essays commissioned by the Australia India Institute focusing on various aspects of the relationship between India and Australia. The Institute declared that Fearless Nadia had brought a new joie de vivre and chutzpah into Indian cinema with her breathtaking ‘stunts’. The Occasional Papers Series seeks to inject a similar audacity and creative dialogue into the relationship between India and Australia.