Biography of Himanshu Rai

(1892 - 1940)

Himanshu Rai was born in 1892. While studying Law in London, Rai developed an interest in acting and decided to improve the standard of Indian films by taking inputs from foreign films. He convinced Germany's Emelka Studio to co-produce the silent film 'Light of Asia', made in 1927, along with the Great Eastern Film Corporation, Delhi. Afterward, Rai in collaboration with various filmmakers, which included the famous German Studio, U.F.A., made the films 'Shiraz' and A Throw of Dice'.

In 1933, he collaborated with I.B.P. of England and made India's first Hindi-English bilingual film, "Karma', starring himself and his wife, Devika Rani. In 1935, he started his own studio - Bombay Talkies, India's first public limited film company. Later on he gave up acting and concentrated on supervising the shooting of films like 'Acchut Kanya’, and "Bhabhi'.

Rai, a pioneer of using simple language in film dialogues, instead of high-flowing Urdu, died in 1940.