Gajanan Jagirdar

Biography

First major freelance director-character actor in Marathi and Hindi cinema. Born in Amravati. Child actor on amateur stage. Started Arun Players in Pune and staged Chekov’s Cherry Orchard and Harindranath Chattopadhyay’s Returned from Abroad. Claimed Ernst Lubitsch’s The Patriot (1928) as a major influence. Started in films as writer of English intertitles at Prabhat; then bit actor. Apprenticed to Bhalji Pendharkar. Made films for Master Vinayak’s Huns Pictures, briefly at Minerva Movietone as scenarist for Sohrab Modi (Meetha Zaher, Talaaq, etc.) and at P.K. Atre’s company. Best-known film: Ramshastri (at Prabhat), taking over the direction from Raja Nene and Bedekar as well as playing the lead role. Main performance was as the Muslim patriarch in Shantaram’s Shejari. Appointed first director of the FTII (1960) and became well-known pedagogue applying e.g. Stanislavski’s theories to local conditions in a book about acting (1983). Published two autobiographies (1971 & 1986). Made a TV serial, Swami, on the life of Madhavrao Peshwa, celebrating Marathi chauvinism.