Dattatraya Damodar Dabke, also known as D. D. Dabke, played the lead role in Raja Harishchandra, the first silent film ever made in India. He shared the screen with Anna Salunke. It was directed by Dadasaheb Phalke in 1913. The film also stars Bhalchandra Phalke and Gajanan Vasudev Sane. He appeared in three additional feature films, Satyavadi Raja Harishchandra (1917), Lanka Dahan (1917), and Shri Krishna Janma (1918), before going on to work as a director and cinematographer. He directed the 1924 remake of Raja Harishchandra.
Dabke’s first film as a lead actor premiered on April 21, 1913, at the Olympia Theatre in Bombay and was released theatrically on May 3, 1913, at the Coronation Cinematograph and Variety Hall in Girgaon. It was a commercial success, laying the groundwork for the country’s film industry. Only the first and last reels of the movie are kept at the National Film Archive of India, which explains that part of the movie has been lost.
Some cinema historians believe they are from a 1917 adaptation of Phalke’s Satyavadi Raja Harishchandra. The Government of India recognises Raja Harischandra as the first Indian feature film.
Meanwhile, his co-star, Anna Salunke, was an Indian actor and cinematographer who specialised in playing female roles in early Indian cinema. He is credited as being the first person to play a female in Indian cinema when he played Rani Taramati of King Harishchandra in Dada Saheb Phalke’s first full-length film, Raja Harishchandra (1913). Salunke played both the hero and the heroine in Lanka Dahan in 1917, making her the first actor to play a dual role in an Indian film.
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