Mehtab (actress)

Mehtab
Screen shot from Jhansi Ki Rani (1953)
Born
Najma Khan

(1913-04-28)28 April 1913
Died10 April 1997(1997-04-10) (aged 83)
Resting placeBada Qabrastan, Marine Lines, Mumbai
OccupationActress
Years active1928–1969
Spouses
Ashraf Khan
(divorced)
(m. 1946; died 1984)
Children2 Sons

Mehtab (1913–1997) was an Indian actress of Hindi/Urdu films who worked from 1928 to 1969.[1] She was born in Sachin, Gujarat, to a Muslim family and named Najma. Her father, Nawab Sidi Ibrahim Mohammad Yakut Khan III, was the Nawab of Sachin, near Surat in the state of Gujarat.[2] Starting her career in the late 1920s with small roles in films like Second Wife (1928), Indira B. A. (1929) and Jayant (1929), she went on to do character roles before acting in the lead opposite Ashraf Khan in Veer Kunal (1932). After almost a decade of doing mainly action-oriented roles, she came into prominence with the Kidar Sharma-directed Chitralekha (1941).

She married her early co-star Ashraf Khan with whom she had a son. They divorced later and she married Sohrab Modi in 1946. Modi cast her in the historical drama Jhansi Ki Rani (1953), which in spite of having spectacular scenes and lavish sets could not work well at the box office.[3] She stopped acting in films following 1953 except to act in her last role as a character artist in Modi's Samay Bada Balwan (1969). She died in Mumbai on 10 April 1997.[citation needed]

  1. ^ "Yesteryear actress Mehtab remembers her husband Sohrab Modi". cineplot.com. Cineplot.com. Retrieved 25 December 2014.
  2. ^ "Mehtab-biography". cinegems.in. Cinegems.in. Archived from the original on 25 December 2014. Retrieved 25 December 2014.
  3. ^ B D Garga (1 December 2005). Art Of Cinema. Penguin Books Limited. pp. 57–. ISBN 978-81-8475-431-5. Retrieved 18 December 2014.