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!
