I remember this actress as simply "Helen" the "cabaret" dancer in pre-Bollywood days of Hindi cinema.
No sooner would Helen appear on the screen--never to act, but always to wriggle her breasts and hip--the movie theater would break out into a cacophony of wolf whistles, emanating from the gruffly mustached lips of male members in the audience.
But Helen is also Helen Richardson, the daughter of a Burmese mother and an Anglo-Indian father, with a rich life-trajectory.
Helen's parents were forced to emigrate from Burma after Japan occupied the country.
In today's day and age, Helen would be a cherished object of diligent study on account of the text-book hybridity of her identity.
Watch her life in this documentary Queen of the Nautch Girls.
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