I don't want to threadjack the other thread about Mormon women working outside the home, but this issue was brought forcefully to my attention yesterday when I was (as I am today) cleaning out old "papers" of many kinds (documents, letters, magazines, culled articles, plot synopses, headshots and bios, handwritten notes I made, etc.)--plus fan mail to various performers.

When I was working for the teen fan magazines (mid-1960s through the 1970s mostly), I became the "recipient"/"repository" of a literally overwhelming amount (thousands of letters) of worldwide fan mail, some of it addressed to (mostly) various Monkees and Raiders, but the bulk of it addressed to a particular teen "fave" who, with another teen fave, co-starred in a still memorable TV series which (despite the fact that it was cancelled after a couple of seasons) made a huge and lasting impact on the teen fans of that era--to the point where the person I dealt with most often (the one from India) actually, because of his (rags-to-"riches") life story, and through the influence of his brief, but immensely memorable, TV series, changed millions of actively developing lives permanently for the better.

So I am going through these remaining bags and boxes of fan mail, because I need to make sure nothing of value is sent to the paper recycling and that personal information and photos are shredded, and one of the letters I pull out of the envelope is from an obviously thoughtful young girl (maybe twelve or thirteen) who wants [this TV actor's] answers to certain questions. (Just about all of the letters have questions of some sort or another--mostly about trivia, but sometimes of much deeper importance.)

This girl is from the Midwest, and she, very obviously, REALLY wants to know his answers to the following two questions:

1) What is his opinion on women working? She states clearly that she, herself, is against women working, especially if they are wives and mothers, but (in ways she may not be conscious of) she's obviously questioning her own "given beliefs"--and because he comes from a totally different culture (India), she wants HIS input on this question as she is turning it over in her mind.

My read is that her upbringing was somewhere on the evangelical spectrum, she knew what she was "supposed" to believe (according to her own family and community), but despite herself, she was, nevertheless, questioning. (Which is one of the major tasks of adolescents as they gradually transition into adults.) She though that his words might help her understand her own individualizing beliefs on this subject.

2) She wanted to know what he thought about females wearing "pants"/slacks. She said that she, herself, LOVED to be able to wear pants "at home" (where she could not be seen by outsiders), that they were "SO COMFORTABLE" [!], and she obviously felt guilty about her delight in being able to wear pants sometimes, but she wanted to know what he thought about women in public wearing pants. (She was basically asking if he thought that females who wore pants, either at home or outside the home, were "bad.")

I went through a bunch of remaining fan mail letters yesterday (and I thank the You Tube gods for the video presentations which keep me sane as I am doing this kind of work!), and I am STILL thinking about that one girl, who once upon a time was a beginning adolescent, who thought that writing a fan letter to someone she obviously respected immensely would result in a reply, and an "outside" answer (from a native of the Indian subcontinent!), which would help her not only become the person she was beginning to feel she wanted to be, but simultaneously, the person her family and her community expected her to be.

She has lived through interesting times, and I wonder "where" she is, in her own personal development, right now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2019 05:34PM by Tevai.

Tevai, I used to read those fan magazines (Tiger Beat and 16 Magazine) when I was growing into adolescence back in the late 60s and early 70s. I believe I know exactly who you are talking about because I had a huge crush on him at the time. He was gorgeous in his youth. It was the beginning of my attraction to (speaking broadly) Asian men. I'm not sure what he's up to these days.

I don't recall writing any fan letters at the time, but I wrote one many years later to a Quebecois actor. I sent him a present, too. Silly me! But I did enjoy being a fan of the actor's work, and I saw him several yards in front of me at a fan panel once, which was fun.

Now, I could give a fig about any celebrity's opinions, because I figure mine are just as valid. It's funny how humans often have the need to hero-worship.

:D

Here's the capsule later bio:

While he was here (in southern California) his "here" career went on for a bit after the series was cancelled (he recorded some songs, made some personal and TV appearances, etc.), but he had a prior history: before he ever arrived here, he was a widely-known, "Indian hero," due to his previous film work in India which began when he was very little. (His adoptive father, in India, was a prominent Indian film producer.)

So he had a prior, "there," career (with national fame in India), he could go back to.

He later owned a jewelry manufacturing company (in India), and my sense is: even today, he remains a cover-subject, national film star vis-à-vis the Indian film industry.

He is Googleable, but be careful: There is another "name" film celebrity, who I think is in the same general age range, and they share an identical name. [EDITED TO ADD: There appear to be at least three of them. Figure out from your own birth year approximately what range of years he would likely have been born in. "Mehboob Khan" is/was his adoptive father.]

When I was working at TIGER BEAT, I got a phone call one day from MGM saying: "We have thousands of pieces of fan mail here, and we have no idea what to do with it--but we do need you to come down and get it off our hands--like this afternoon, if at all possible." I drove over to Culver City and was shown a room which had sacks and sacks of letters, all addressed to him. Somehow, I (and the people in the MGM mailroom) were able to stuff it into my car, and I drove it home.

I think I may be getting to the end of it now, after all this time....but I also would not be surprised to open up a previously "unknown" carton in storage and find hundreds of letters to him inside.

He certainly did leave a lasting impression on those who "knew" him during those years (whether they were fans, or were in the industry)--and it appears that the same is true for the sub-continent (and those in that, larger, entertainment sphere) as well.

I am glad you posted this, summer. Thank you. :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2019 09:23PM by Tevai.

What was lost is now found! Thanks for the tip, Tevai. I figured that he had gone back to India. I hope that he has had a happy life.

Oh, c'mon you guys. You can't post these interesting pieces about celebrities and then not tell us his name. Please?

memikeyounot Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Oh, c'mon you guys. You can't post these
> interesting pieces about celebrities and then not
> tell us his name. Please?

Sajid Khan.

The show was "Maya."

Before you sent me off in his direction, I didn't realize that he had made an appearance in one of the Merchant-Ivory films. I will have to keep an eye out for it.

except I didn't follow this person. I might recognize him if I saw a picture. I grew up in the 1960s to 1970s. My mother wore a dress everyday including to clean, etc. I never thought much about it. We were not allowed to wear pants to junior high or high school. Then we could wear "pant suits," then pants and top,then finally jeans in my senior year. But junior high was tough to have to wear a dress every day.

I always thought being a SAHM was the way to go. My mother didn't work very often. They used to license all cars in March and so she would work that month. My sisters and I would go to daycare and I remember it well. In fact, they had us take off our clothes and nap in our in our underwear and undershirts. Believe it or not!!! This was little Brigham City, Utah. I can still see myself lying there. It was a very unpleasant experience, the whole thing. I HATED IT. I swore my kids would never go to daycare and they never did. I worked evenings and weekends, but I HAD TO GET OUT. My sister had to put her kids in daycare and I'd go pick them up when I got off work so they didn't have to spend any extra time there.

BUT I definitely see the need for daycare. I know my daughter will have to work (mentally and financially) and I plan on taking care of her kids.

Thank you for this, c12!

Your experiences of that time are very interesting corroboration of the what the girl in the Midwest was, evidently simultaneously with you, going through.

My perspective of that time has now expanded to include me being able to mentally deal with some things I did not "see" back then (even though I was living them, too, along with everyone else), things I often did not comprehend as they were happening.

For me, personally: I was just muddling through, trying with everything I had in me to increase my list of credits because I KNEW my entire future (no matter in which direction that "future" lay) depended on the foundation of the credits I was able to earn at that time.

[In both the entertainment and the publishing industries, you do what you have to do--or what you CAN do, if you're fast enough to take advantage of a fortuitous opportunity.

During that time, and totally aside from the teen fan magazines I was also writing for, I was at a local L.A. TV station to interview Eartha Kitt for a cover article to be published by a health food oriented magazine I wrote regular cover articles for.

I was in the midst of interviewing her in her dressing room, there were several people there (makeup, costumers, etc.), and suddenly the door kind of bursts open and a guy rushes in and yells out: "Is there anyone here who can make cue cards?" And I reflexively put up my hand and said: "I can!" (I had never made a cue card before--I had NO idea how to make them, BUT...everyone has to start SOMEWHERE, right?)

The production staff gave me a stack of blank cardstock, and the marking pens, while a P.A. (production assistant) gave me the script they needed the cards for (it was the Eartha Kitt segment), and showed me how to do it...and I made the cue cards for Eartha Kitt's performance at KHJ-TV that day.

My reasoning was: "It is a CREDIT. Maybe someday I will be able to use it to get a production assistant job...or as background for something I will, in the future, write."

So that day I got TWO credits:

1) Cover/feature article on Eartha Kitt in the health food magazine, and

2) Cue card maker for KHJ-TV.]

Looking back, it was a yeasty and pivotal time in our history, when the entertainment industry, the publishing industry, and all of American society and the country, were undergoing incredibly deep changes on SO many different, and simultaneous, levels....changes which would very soon be unstoppable, as well as irreversible.

I did not have this perspective then, but I can look back now and see that it was happening, in hindsight actually incredibly obviously, step by step.

Thank you for your personal, and very much to the point, corroborating story, c12, and....

Thank you to summer, too!!

You, summer, and the girl who wrote the fan letter, were (as the three of you lived your different daily lives) literally important creators of American history in the making.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2019 01:48PM by Tevai.