Meeting my LA cousin in Harrods

I never thought when I started investigating my family tree that it would end up with me getting taken out for tea and cakes at Harrods by my glamorous American cousin, but that’s exactly what happened this week.  Vimlamati, who’s my great great aunt Mary’s granddaughter, got in touch to say she was in London on business and would love to meet up, and said if I could come down to London with Suky she’d take Suky to visit Santa in Santa’s grotto at Harrods, and we could catch up and have an English tea.  Vimlamati’s a choreographer and she’s really beautiful and elegant.  I was a bit shy to meet her at first but she was really nice and friendly.  She said that she’d seen all the photos of the Shanta Rao Dutt exhibition in Liverpool and the blue plaque unveiling, and had been trying to spot me on the pictures, by looking for the family resemblance.  Turns out she got it right too.

Suky is normally really shy with new people but she was really laughing and playing with Vimlamati straight away, it was brilliant.  I think Suky was even more excited to meet Vimlamati than she was to meet Father Christmas!  Next time Vimlamati’s coming to London for work she says she’s going to try and add on an extra couple of days to her trip so she can come up to Liverpool to visit us.  That will be so lovely.  And when Suky’s a little bit older we might take her over to LA for a visit too.

Vimlamati brought over loads of photographs of my ancestor Mary Dutt in the chorus line in loads of Hollywood movies for me to take home.  As soon as I’ve got them scanned in, I’ll put some of them up on here. And I can’t wait to show gran, she’ll love them.  I’m really excited to have a real live movie star in the family.

You would think that was enough excitement for one festive season, but not only did I get invited to London by Shanta Rao Dutt’s grand daughter, I’ve also been invited to Edinburgh for Hogmanay to see the Bollywood song and dance spectacular called Bollywood Steps that Nutkhut do – they’re putting it on as part of the New Year’s Eve celebrations.  Nutkhut were the arts organisation that found Shanta Rao Dutt’s long lost silent movie in the first place, and started off the whole project.  It was their director Ajay that put me in touch with the Dutt half of my family – and I’ve now met not one but two of my relatives from America in the last few months, thanks to him.  I can’t wait to tell him about it all when I see him up in Edinburgh!

Movieplex World Premiere in Liverpool

Hey, guess who got to swan about on the red carpet in Prince’s Park last week? It was an amazing day, and I can’t quite believe it all really happened. All this from just starting to try and find out a bit about my family history. I’m going to try and remember it all and tell you what happened in order, so here goes:

First off I got invited to a blue plaque unveiling on Hope Street. There’s a house on Hope Street that used to be the boarding house where Shanta Rao Dutt was staying when he was in Liverpool – I think it’s number 19 – so the Movieplex people got together and organised to get a blue plaque put up on the wall. It says Shanta Rao Dutt filmmaker lived here. I got a call from Ajay the guy who’s running the Movieplex project and he invited me along, so I rocked up at lunchtime just in time to see this gorgeous old vintage car pulling up. And guess who was in it? Only Natasha Rao Dutt the filmstar! She’s Shanta Rao Dutt’s Great Grand Niece and she’d come to Liverpool specially for the day to attend the world premiere of Shanta’s 1920 movie. Well I suppose it’s not actually the premiere since it did get shown originally in 1920 – but it is the first time it’s been shown in more than 80 years, which is pretty special.

Natasha Rao Dutt was absolutely gorgeous – and so nice! Here are some pics of her I took on my phone. It’s taken me ages to work out how to get them off the mobile and onto my computer but I finally managed it.

Natasha Rao Dutt unveiling the blue plaque to Shanta Rao Dutt on Hope Street

Natasha Rao Dutt under the Blue Plaque

Natasha Rao Dutt with a representative from Liverpool Culture Company, Professor Leonard Plate, and Lucy Forster

You wouldn’t know Natasha Rao Dutt’s actually a really big time actress in Hollywood from the way she was so friendly and chatty, but apparently she’s going to be in a really big movie that’s about to come out. She was being a bit coy about it, but her personal assistant said something about the new Bond film… maybe I actually met a Bond girl! Well Ajay introduced me to her and told Natasha I was a relation of hers, and she said she was super excited to meet me! I got her to give me her autograph, here it is:

Natasha Rao Dutt's autograph and personal message

And here’s a pic of me actually meeting Natasha that my mate took on her phone!

Natasha giving me her autograph

Next up was the actual world premiere of the Movieplex event itself over in Prince’s Park that evening. I got invited along for a special drinks reception at 5 o’clock, and we got a babysitter so Harry could come with me. They’ve got two containers that they’ve put together, and one of them is a little mini museum about Shanta Rao Dutt and the other one is a mini cinema, it’s really cute! I met so many Shanta Rao Dutt fans, it was incredible: I had no idea there were so many people into his work, all over the world. I even met a professor who’s written two books about him! And I met the lady from the northern film archive who did all the restoration on the film – it’s an incredible story, Ajay from Nutkhut actually found the film canister in the drawer of this antique dresser he bought in Wallasey, while he was in Liverpool doing the Bollywood Steps show. He says him and his wife are really into antiques so they went on a bit of a shopping trip on their day off to hunt for bargains. And he ended up finding the only known copy in the world of this completely lost film – so I suppose it just goes to show it’s always worth going out of your way to hunt for something special!

And then Natasha Rao Dutt drove up in that beautiful old vintage car again, and she stepped out of it onto the red carpet and made this really sweet speech about how proud she was to be in Liverpool – and she mentioned my great great aunt Mary specially because she said that she’d been a campaigner for the protection of swans, and Natasha is carrying on her work and is now an international ambassador for the protection of swans. I’ll have to tell my gran that – my gran’s got a lovely glass swan in her cabinet: I wonder if it used to be Mary’s? Not that I suppose she had much money for ornaments but you never know, she might have saved up, and my gran’s mum might have kept it to remember her sister by after Mary ran away with Shanta.

And then a small group of us guests got invited to join Natasha on the red carpet and go inside the Movieplex room for the first ever tour – so me and Harry had our moment on the red carpet too! Even if it was only a mini red carpet, it was still a laugh. I tell you what though, as soon as we got inside I was blown away, because the whole room was full of stuff that had belonged to Shanta and Mary. The professor, who’s called Professor Leonard Plate, and this lovely girl called Lucy Forster were giving us a special guided tour and Lucy showed me this beautiful beaded bag that she said a famous Hollywood star had given to Mary – I think it was Dirk Bogart. She actually said he’d put his house keys inside it but that Mary had thrown them back in his face! Go Mary! Harry said that sounded like the sort of thing I’d do but I told him if it was George Clooney giving me his house keys I might have second thoughts!! Then we got shown into this really gorgeous little mini cinema all lined in red velvet and we sat on little velvet seats, and the film started and I finally got to see my great great aunt’s face.

Mary Dutt was really beautiful. She looked amazing in the film – and it was really funny and romantic. It was all set on the docks and there was this cute young Indian docker who really liked her and she was the daughter of the owner, but she really liked the docker too… but I shouldn’t say any more because you should go and see the film for yourself. All the dates and times and stuff are on the special website they’ve made for it, here you go:
http://www.movieplex.biz/
It’s going to be in London too, on the South Bank. I might come down for the London launch as well. Harry says I’m getting a bit used to red carpets now!

Shanta Rao Dutt film in the Liverpool Echo

Cheers for the tip-off Mark – I just found the article about the Shanta Rao Dutt film in the Liverpool Echo!

I’ve posted the link up on the site if anybody wants to have a read – it’s got a clip of the film on it.  I’m not sure my great great aunt is in this bit but apparently she’s definitely in the full film, so I can’t wait to see that next week.

Han

x

Long Lost Californian Cousin!

Guess, what? I just got an email from Mary Emmet’s granddaughter! I never realised family history could be this exciting. So far I’ve been invited to a red carpet miniature film premiere AND I’ve been invited to come and visit a relative I never even knew I had in California!!

This guy called Ajay, who’s the guy that’s running the Shanta Rao Dutt event at Liverpool 08, replied straight away to my email last week, and he was actually really excited to hear from a relative of Mary Emmet’s. He said they’d love to have me there when they show the film in Liverpool because I’m an important local connection, and would I mind if some of the local press wanted to talk to me too? I told Harry I’m going to be a celebrity and go down the red carpet and he laughed! But bless him, he said he’d buy me a new dress and baby-sit Suky if I liked so I could go. I told him it’s not going to be for another couple of weeks but he likes to plan ahead… that’s probably why he’s so good at running the restaurants.

Then as if that wasn’t exciting enough the next thing that happened was that Ajay said that he’d told the Dutt family about me, and that Shanta’s granddaughter – that’s Mary’s granddaughter too, and my first cousin twice removed (or is it my second cousin? I’m not sure how it works. I’ll ask my gran) – anyway, she’d said she’d love to hear from me if I wanted to get in touch with her, and asked Ajay to pass on her email address. Her name’s Vimlamati Dutt and she lives in California. Ajay’s email didn’t say much else about her except that she was in her 50s and she was a choreographer and ex dancer. I wanted to ask him loads more about her before I got in touch because I didn’t want her to think I was rude, not knowing anything about her, but I didn’t want to bother him too much either when he’s so busy getting the show ready. I was a bit scared to write to her for a few days but I told gran about it and gran said don’t be ridiculous, she’ll be over the moon to hear from you, you don’t have to worry about offending her. Anyway if she lives in California gran reckoned she’d be quite relaxed because everybody who lives there is really ‘laid back’ anyway. It’s hilarious when gran comes out with stuff like ‘laid back’, I think she must get it from the telly.

So I sent Vimlamati an email and I tried not to go on too much but I told her I’d only just found out about what had happened to Mary Emmet and so I was really sorry I hadn’t been in touch before, and then I told her a bit about me, Harry and Suky and I attached a photo. Then she emailed me back the next morning! I’m going to paste her email into this blog because it’s so lovely.

Hi there Hannah

How great to hear from you, and thank you so much for the photo of you and your brood. I’m very excited to discover a whole new branch of family I didn’t know I had!

It’s incredible how much you look like my grandmother in the old photographs I have of her. I’ll have to see if I can find one to send you. Have you seen her on film yet? You mention you don’t know where in America my grandparents settled; well they went to Hollywood, where they both had successful careers in the movie industry. Grandmother was a superb dancer – and she appeared in the chorus line in several films of the 1930s and 1940s. She was in Broadway Melody and Love Parade in 1929, and she was one of Busby Berkeley’s girls in Forty-Second Street in 1933. Then she worked as an assistant to Busby Berkeley and other movie choreographers for many years; sadly she was never credited in her own right on any movies (she always said it was because none of those guys would let an ex chorus girl get too big for her boots), but she was an excellent choreographer, and taught me to dance as a child.

We were very close, throughout my childhood, and it is thanks to her that I became a dancer and choreographer in my turn. We used to watch old musicals from the 20s and 30s together and she would point herself out to me on the screen; we often had to freeze frame the video before we could catch a glimpse of her face. The whole family used to tease her about her 15 minutes of fame!

My grandmother kept her English accent throughout her life, even though she travelled widely with my grandfather. She passed on in 1975 at 75 years of age. How sad that she never had the opportunity to be reconciled with her family before her death; she was a proud woman, I’m afraid, and always insisted that her family would have to make the first move to contact her. But she used to talk to me about her English childhood, and spoke with great fondness of her brothers and sisters, and her hometown of Liverpool. I hope to be able to visit during the Liverpool 08 celebrations. It will be incredible to watch my grandparents’ silent movie being screened at last in the city where it was filmed, after being lost for nearly a century. Rather like my Liverpool family!

Forgive me for being sentimental, but I am deeply moved to have found you, and to think that at long last the family disagreements can be put behind us once and for all.

You must come visit me in California with your husband and daughter. Whenever my work commitments do not keep me on the road, I live in a very beautiful little town called Bodega Bay on the Pacific coast, an hour and a half’s drive from San Francisco. I keep all my grandmother’s photographs and memorabilia here – some of them have been included for display in the Movieplex exhibition coming to Liverpool in August. I hope to be able to show the whole collection to you some day.

Meanwhile, please tell me more about your own family and your life in Liverpool. I’m so excited to hear that your own grandmother, and my first cousin, is still alive. How wonderful it would be to meet her. Please send her, and all the rest of your family, my very best wishes.

All the very best,

Your cousin

Vimlamati

How about that? My scandalous aunt was a Hollywood chorus girl!!! And what a lovely lovely letter. I hope Vimlamati does come over to Liverpool in August; I’m going to email straight back and invite her to stay with us!

Mary Emmet, My Scandalous Ancestor

I never knew we had a scandal in the family – I always thought my family was boring and nothing ever happened to us lot.  Funny how stuff like that gets hushed up for decades.  I’m glad I found out about Mary Emmet while my gran’s still around to talk to, because she still remembers all the gossip from when she was a kid, and she can talk about it till the cows come home.  I’ve decided that’s the most interesting way to do research into your family tree; talk to the ancestors you’ve got who are still alive.  Plus gran loves it when I bring Suky round to visit her; she reckons she’s the spitting image of my mum when she was a baby, which is hilarious because Suky’s half Chinese and she’s got black hair – and mum’s blonde.  Or maybe she’s not a natural blonde… ooer. That’s one family secret she’ll probably take to her grave.

But back to Mary Emmet.  It all came out when I was talking to my gran about Suky and I said something about being the first generation of my family to get together with somebody from a different background and have a mixed race kid.  Gran said something about how “you young people always think you’re the first to do everything” and I thought, oh no, here we go, she’s going to go on about how hard it was when she was my age, living on Scotland Road with the whole family in two tiny rooms, and we young people don’t know we’re born blah blah blah.  Instead of which she told me that back in 1920 her mum’s little sister Mary had run off with an Indian guy.

Turns out this guy was a film director making a silent movie, and he got Mary to be in it.  She was working as a chambermaid at this guesthouse along the Scottie Road and he was a guest there.  Mary kept it secret that she was acting in the film because in those days it wasn’t that respectable, and with our family being strict Catholics back then (we’re all pretty ‘lapsed’ nowadays) she knew they wouldn’t approve.  So the first any of the family knew about it was when Mary turned up on the doorstep with this Indian guy and told everybody they’d just got married at the Registry Office.  According to my gran, my great great granddad tried to take the poker to him, so him and Mary turned round and scarpered straight out of the house again.  Brilliant.

Gran can’t actually remember anything useful, like what the Indian director’s name was, or what the film was called, and whether you can still get hold of it.  She’s not even sure where they went after they hot-footed it out of Liverpool, although she thinks it was America, because family legend has it that a letter arrived with American stamps on it a couple of months afterwards.  But gran says her mum told her that my great great grandad burnt it, so they had no way of getting in touch with Mary.  How frustrating is that?  I find out about this amazing story and then the trail goes stone cold.

Except then I had a brainwave.  Check out the registry office records.  At first I thought I was going to have to schlep all the way over to the register office in the cotton exchange with Suky in the buggy, but then I had a brainwave and checked the internet.  And yes, you can look up marriages online, then order a copy of the certificate by post – brilliant.

So the certificate arrived in the post a couple of days ago, and there it was: Mary Emmet was married to Shanta Rao Dutt on 6 June 1920 in the Liverpool Register Office.  So then I put “Shanta Rao Dutt” into google and you’re not going to believe this: they’re only doing a whole event about him in Liverpool this summer as part of the Liverpool 08 celebrations.  It’s being run by an organisation called Nutkhut, and when I looked them up I realised I’d seen one of their things a couple of years ago.  They did this show in 2006 called Bollywood Steps, where they had masses of dancers doing these amazing routines outside on the steps of the Catholic Cathedral, with fireworks, fountains, the lot.  I loved it – and even Harry got into it, to his own surprise!  So I’ve sent them an email to see if they can help me find out something about my great great aunt, since she was this guy’s missus.  They’re probably really busy, but hopefully they might be in touch with the family or something like that, and they can pass my message on.

Suky’s just woken up so I’ve got to go and make her tea now – I’ll keep you posted!