This is the story of a young boy from India whose life turned into art. He is, as destiny had it, the first Indian to set foot on the international stage. But sadly, not much is known about his story. Decades before any Indian actor rose to fame in the West, Sabu Dastagir had already starred in a string of English adventure movies.
Born in 1924 in Karapur, Mysore, Sabu was the son of a mahout who served the Mysore Maharaja. Having lost his father at an early age, Sabu spent most of his time working in the elephant stables. His actual name was Selar Sabu. His brother, who accompanied him on his journey abroad, was called Dastagir. The immigration officials confused the names of the two brothers and called him Sahu Dastagir. But the name stuck.
The story of how a stable boy made it big in the West is fascinating. There’s much speculation on who discovered Sabu. Some believe Robert Flaherty, a documentary filmmaker, ‘discovered’ Sabu at the young age of 11. As the story goes, he cast Sabu in a movie, titled “Elephant Boy,” based on Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Toomai and the Elephants.’
Flaherty shot some sequences of the movie in Mysore. But the remaining sequences were shot in England by Zoltan Korda, one of the producers of the film. The Korda brothers brought Sabu and his brother to England to complete the shooting. Fortune favoured the film and it turned to be a huge hit. And Sabu’s natural talent for acting was widely acclaimed by critics.
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