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Rose Musleah aka Miss Rose (Jan 1911-Dec 1985)

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Indian Jewish actress Rose Musleah, known as “Miss Rose.” From Film India, Vol. 7, Issue 5 (May 1, 1941), p. 40. Courtesy of the National Film Archive of India, Pune. Rose Musleah (also known as Miss Rose) was born in 1911 in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in British India, the only child of a Jewish family of Baghdadi origin. Her father was the secretary of the Costa Rican consul in India. Musleah dreamed of studying medicine, but her wealthy parents prevented her from doing so. Upon finishing her studies at the age of 15, which she graduated with honors, became a personal secretary, and taught ballroom dancing in the evenings. Because of her attractive appearance, friends suggested she start acting and she started acting on the stages, for Agha Ashhar.

In 1927 at the age of 16 she got married, changed her name to that of her husband and became Rose Ezra. The couple had two daughters Marjorie and Cynthia. They later went through divorce and she returned to her original name Rose Musleah. Rose went through significant financial difficulties before becoming a star of the silent films in the twenties. In 1935 she moved to Bombay and joined Imperial's first studios. Rose had two cousins who were also actresses: Pramila (Esther Victoria Abraham) and Ramula (Sophie Abraham). She co-starred with her cousin Pramila In the 1936 film Hamari Betiyan (Our Darling Daughters), . In the movies she liked to play the role of a country girl, although she mostly played a rich character. She co-starred with actors Motilal in Hum Tum Aur Woh in 1938 and Prithviraj Kapoor in Adhuri Kahani in 1939. She was known for her dancing and singing talent in films, as well as the colorful dresses and luxurious sarees she used to wear in films and in life. A back injury from which she never recovered, ended her acting career. After stopping her acting career, she remarried and moved to the United States. Musleah died in Los Angeles, California, United States in 1985. In an interview she had in 1941, she said that she still loved to dance and taught her two daughters to dance and that her favorite author was Somerset Maugham. [5] Rose Musleah's granddaughter, Rachel Reuben Cohen, became a film editor.

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