Bandana Das Gupta

Silence is golden

Indian actress Bandana Das Gupta’s film and TV career lasted only five years before being cut tragically short by affairs of the heart. Many of her roles were modest or brief, but it was a classical turn opposite the young, pre-Bond Sean Connery – in which she uttered not a word – that would speak volumes about her talent. Jeremy Isaac remembers a nuanced performance and a promise unfulfilled…

BORN THE DAUGHTER OF a lawyer in Calcutta, India, in 1930, Bandana Das Gupta was determined from an early age to become an actress – something usually frowned upon for girls in the country at that time. Following a raft of radio broadcasts and a single film appearance (Yatrik, 1952), and in the face of fierce opposition from her family, she left her home to travel to Great Britain, arriving at Tilbury on the SS Orcades from Colombo, Sri Lanka, on 25 October 1954. She was listed as a student, reflecting her intention to study at RADA from which she graduated the following year. It was not long before she found work in the theatre, appearing opposite prestigious names such as Eric Porter, Peter Sellers and Eileen Atkins in both Shakespearian and less formal works in London’s West End and in the provinces.

Publicity shots started to appear in 1955, and in 1957 she seems to have been signed by a talent agency, which took her on a promotional tour of Rome, where she was snapped in high-level boutiques and posing at the Barcaccia fountain by the Spanish Steps, and also Spain, where she attended the San Sebastian International Film Festival, meeting director Antonio de Zulueta, president Juan Pagola and actress Karoline Karoll.

It was also in 1957 that she won her first TV role, as nightclub performer Collette in a crime drama entitled Night Crossing, a part of the Scotland Yard series. She also took the role of Dalia in BBC Sunday Night Theatre’s ‘The English Family Robinson.’ In 1958 she was the Sultana to Peter Sellers’s Sultan in BBC Theatre Night’s production of Brouhaha, which was transmitted live from the stage of London's Aldwych Theatre.

1960 saw Bandana continue to make inroads on the small screen, first in two episodes of ITV crime drama Man From Interpol, ‘The Front Man’, in the role of Hamisa, and ‘Murder Below Decks’ as Nasia, and with Kay Callard as nurse Fariz on the same channel’s crime thriller Knight Errant Ltd. Stage roles at the Mermaid Theatre also followed, but more importantly, this was the year that saw her make her first foray onto the big screen in the role of a ‘Sphinx Girl’ in The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, starring Christopher Lee, Paul Massie, Dawn Adams and Oliver Reed in his first role for Hammer Films.

The following year was even busier, with more substantial film work as Inez in the drama The Mark, starring Stuart Whitman, a comedy role as a ‘Foreign Beauty’ opposite the legendary Tony Hancock in The Rebel and a return to Hammer as housekeeper Anna Chang in The Terror of the Tongs, again starring Christopher Lee. There was also more prestigious TV work with Honor Blackman in the cult classic The Avengers as kidnap victim Carmelita Mendoza, but it was the intriguing role of Roxanna in a TV adaptation of  Terence Rattigan’s Adventure Story opposite a young, pre-Bond Sean Connery that stands out as by far her finest performance.

Described by one observer as ‘one of the strangest parts of the year on TV’, it is this role, as the hostage daughter of a Persian chieftain waging war on Alexander the Great (Connery), that is the most beguiling, for in it she speaks no lines at all, working her way through the entire performance via a series of musical, giggling interludes and a solitary scream. Yet despite the apparently superficial nature of the role, her character of Roxanna is, in fact, a defining one.

Told from the viewpoint of Alexander’s deathbed, Adventure Story follows his transformation from a hard-headed, ambitious military commander to a ruthless despot with grandiose visions of ruling the world. His fantasies of power estrange him from comrades such as Hephaestion (William Russell) and, driven by this deep insecurity, he kills many close to him in the name of world dominion, and ends up being haunted by loneliness.

Bandana plays Roxanna, the daughter of the Persian nobleman, who Alexander has taken hostage, and who the conqueror now chooses as his bride, against the wishes of his retinue. Throughout his turmoil during this transformative period, Alexander talks often with Roxanna, sharing his doubts and delusions but there is a problem: ‘She didn’t understand Greek or Persian,’ the actress told The Daily Mail, ‘so conversation between Roxanna and Alexander had to be by other means.’

‘Other means’ saw Roxanna seeming not to understand, merely appearing to listen, then laughing a light, acquiescent, tinkling laugh. Yet there also seems to be wisdom and perhaps guile in her apparent silent incomprehension – does she understand more than she lets on? It is this paradox that Bandana puts over so well, always keeping Alexander guessing – a ‘strange part’ indeed. Production and cast, including the young Indian actress, received good notices and she seemed set for greater success. ‘It was a marvellous part,’ she later recalled, ‘and she was a very formidable woman. When Alexander died she killed everyone who stood in her way and returned to her own country, which was near what we would now call Afghanistan.’

However, despite the fact that work had been plentiful in 1961, things seemed to drop off somewhat the following year, with only two appearances on record, one as secretary Miss Soong, (reminiscent of her role of Inez in The Mark) in The Brain, a creepy film adaptation of Curt Siodmak's novel, Donovan's Brain with Peter van Eyck, the other, billed simply as Bandana Gupta, as one of the Chorus in a two-part TV take on Euripedes’s Greek Tragedy The Bacchae.

After 1962 there is no record of any film or television work, although she may have been keeping busy with stage roles – ‘If someone offered me a good part which I wanted to do, but couldn’t afford to pay me’ she once observed, ‘I would say, “Very well, I will do it.”’ But in late 1965, newspapers reported her suicide by barbiturate poisoning at the age of 35, the result of depression following a broken engagement of three years (perhaps explaining the decline in film and TV work), her body being found in bed at her Chelsea home by her flatmate. Perhaps it was this romantic disappointment, coupled with a decline in acting roles after struggling to make a new life in a new city for nearly a decade, which led her to such a desperate act.

While Bandana’s roles were few and modest, they were not disimilar to those played by other ethnic actresses of the period such as Jacqui Chan, Pik Sen Lim, Yoko Tani and Tsai Chin, who went on to international careers on stage, TV and in films. Those roles which allowed her more substantial time on screen, as well as those on stage with giants of the genre, demonstrate her ability to play in lighter drama vehicles as well as tackling classic works by the likes of Shakespeare, Euripedes and Rattigan. We’ll never know what her career could have been, but the maturity of her brief performance as Anna in The Terror of the Tongs, and especially her wordless but commanding presence in Rattigan’s Adventure Story, show her to have been an actress of depth, talent and great potential.

Bandana Das Gupta: Actress, 1930 – 1965 Filmography 1962 The Bacchae as a member of the Chorus (as Bandana Gupta) The Brain as Miss Soong (below)

1961 Adventure Story as Roxanna (below)

The Terror of the Tongs as Anna Chang, housekeeper (below)

The Rebel as ‘Foreign Beauty’ (below centre)

The Avengers as Carmelita Mendoza The Mark as Inez (below)

1960 The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll as Sphinx Girl Knight Errant Ltd as Nurse Fariz Man From Interpol as Hamisa/Nasia 1958 BBC Theatre Night: Brouhaha as The Sultana 1957 BBC Sunday Night Theatre as Dalia Scotland Yard as Colette (below)

1952 Yatrik as Aunty/Bua (below right, as Bandana Dasgupta)