Bollywood movie auditions rear pictures

Bollywood movie auditions - 1951

If this is how women got into cinema in those days, then I truly feel sorry for them. Let’s just say that…

Or let’s just not say anything at all and let the pictures do the talking, shall we?

Here is an excerpt from the write-up accompanying these photographs…

The photos, which have been doing the rounds on the Internet, are believed to be clicked by Life magazine photojournalist James Burke while Bollywood movie director Abdul Rashid Kardar of Kardar Productions takes a screen test of two young girls - an Indian and a foreigner - for one of his movies.

Abdul Rashid Kardar was a renowned director and is known for directing movies such as Shahjehan (1946), Dillagi (1949), Dulari (1949) and Dil Diya Dard Liya (1966), etc.

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#SPEECHLESS

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EDIT (later the same evening)

I am shocked and appalled at the reactions and comments to this answer coming in predominantly from men. Justifications after justifications. Saying things like women’s bodies sell, they seem perfectly happy then what is your problem?, seeing no ‘exploitation’ here, refusing to see the irrelevance of this kind of ‘casting auditions’ in the 1950s… the list is endless. I have not and will not delete any of the comments. Let them remain there as a testimony to the generic male mindset in issues like this. If you see any comments deleted, they have been done by the writers of the comments themselves or by Quora itself.

As a woman, this is worrying for me.