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Anna Kashfi (1934-2015) |
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- Anna Maria Alberghetti, 10,000 Bedrooms, 1957. Anna was Marlon Brando's mysterious second wife - Indian or Welsh,? She insisted she was born to architect Devi Kashfi and Selma Ghose in Calcutta, 1934. Marlon loved such exotica. He was livid when it was proved she was Joanna Mary O'Callaghan, born to factory worker William Patrick Callaghan and Melinda, also in Calcutta, but then resident in Cardiff, Wales. Anna was ill during wardrobe tests for Dean Martin's first solo film - and diagnosed with TB and admitted to City of Hope Hospital for the rest of 1956. Brando visited her in his Oriental make-up from Teahouse of the August Moon. "He was very attentive," Anna reported, "as long as I was in the hospital, as long as I needed him." Brando later said she was "as negative as a person as I have met."
- Debra Paget, Der Tiger von Eschnapur (UK: Tigress of Bengal; US: Fritz Lang's The Tiger of Eschnapur), West Germany-France-Italy, 1958. For his two-part India epic about a German architect and an Indian mararajah falling for the same dancer, the jronic director Fritz Lang wanted a genuine Indian as Seetha. Bollywood hadn’t, started yet or he would have had plenty to choose from. But the most famous Indian beauty of the hour was Kashfi, Marlon Brando’s first wife (during 1957-1959, until he discovered she was (apparently) born Joan O’Callaghan in Wales). She made a mere ejght screen roles during 1955-1962. Lang next considered Nadja Tiller, an ex-Miss Austria, who’d just had a huge German hit with, indeed as the titular hooker, Das Mädchen Rosemarie (US: Rosemary). Finally, Lang settled for Hollywood’s incandescent Debra Paget – an Indian temple dancer born in Denver, Colorado!
- Debra Paget, Das indische Grabmal (UK/US: The Indian Tomb), West Germany-France-Italy, 1958. Idem... for Part Two.
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