Syeda Rizvi spent almost a lifetime not knowing that her “Mummy” had been a film star and that too from a time when there were not too many of them.
Syeda was catching up with her mother at the latter’s house in Karachi. Her mother, actually foster mother, must have been in her seventies then; Syeda is in her seventies now and settled in the United States. She shared her experience with The Telegraph over several phone calls. Somehow, mid-chatter, the older woman let slip something about her time in the film industry. Years later, long after her mother’s death in 1993, on a whim, Syeda got onto the Internet, ran a search, and there it was — snatches of information on one Patience Cooper, the “siren” of the silent era of Indian cinema.
The silent era was from 1913 to 1931. Patience worked mostly during that time. Films such as Nala Damayanti (1920) and Pati Bhakti (1922), starring Patience and K. Adajania, and Patience and Master Mohan. She acted in Behula (1921) and in Patni Pratap (1923) she had a double role, perhaps the first ever in India. She appeared a few times in the talkies that followed, such as Zehri Saanp (1933) and Anokha Prem (1934). She acted in over 40 films. Film archivist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur tells The
Telegraph, “Almost all those films are lost now.”
Patience Cooper with her nephew William Francis Colin Shaw. Courtesy: Debra Sillence
In those days, it was quite the norm for Anglo-Indian actresses to take on Hindu names, but Patience did not. Among her contemporaries were Renee Smith, whose screen name was Seeta Devi, and Ruby Myers, who was popular as Sulochana. Patience’s sisters Violet and Pearl also acted in films of the silent era as well as early talkies.
Patience Noreen Cooper was born on January 30, 1902, in Howrah. Her mother Phoebe Stella Gamble was of Armenian descent. Debra Sillence, Patience’s great niece, says, “Some say that the Armenian side of Patience’s family might have funded the Armenian Engineering College in Calcutta.” Her father James Alfred Cooper was a guard in the East Indian Railway Company.
Debra continues, “Patience would have been no more than four when Phoebe left James.” In 1906, Phoebe met Francis Henry Lewendon and moved with him and Patience to a house in Calcutta.
Patience had two brothers and nine half-siblings. By the time her youngest sister Joyce was born in 1920, she had already acted in two films. One of the most important films of her career Nala Damayanti was released that year.
The past five years, Debra has been reaching out to her cousins scattered across the world to piece together the story of Patience’s life. It is she who tracked down Syeda and some others and helped The Telegraph get in touch with them.
Debra, who has lived in the UK all her life, has grown up listening to stories about Patience from her father and Patience’s nephew, William Francis Colin Shaw. Debra refers to Patience as her “Aunty Patty”.
William was born in Bihar and went to a boarding school in Darjeeling. During the summers, he would visit Patience and spend a few days with her in Calcutta. Debra says, “By then, Aunty Patty would have been in her mid-thirties. She was living in a house by the Lakes.” William fondly remembers the cake and pocket money she would give him when it was time for him to go back to boarding school.
Patience was married twice. Her first marriage was to the influential businessman Mirza Abul Hassan Ispahani in 1926. Ispahani eventually became the first-ever Pakistani ambassador to America. Their marriage ended abruptly in two years; most likely because his family did not accept her. In 1930, Patience married actor Gul Hamid. Debra says, “But I believe that Ispahani and Aunty Patty always stayed in touch, possibly as friends.”
A series of personal losses impacted Patience’s career. Syeda says, “It is possible grief had something to do with why she stopped acting.”
In 1934, Patience’s brother Frank Albert Lewendon died of tuberculosis. Syeda continues, “Before Mummy could recover from her grief, she lost two more from her closest family.” In 1936, her grandmother passed away, followed by her husband Gul Hamid, who died of Hodgkin disease.
Syeda says, “It wrecked her. It changed something in her.”
Patience loved children. When she lived in Karachi, she fostered 17 children, of whom Syeda Rizvi was one. Syeda lived with Patience for eleven and a half years. She says, “Growing up in Mummy’s care, I celebrated Christmas and Easter, studied catechism, and wore pretty dresses like the other girls. I learned to speak and write English, and at nine, I began attending St. Mary’s, a private Catholic school.”
Syeda calls her education a gift. “My whole life is based on how Mummy raised me. I lived under strict rules. It was quite like a boarding school,” says she. “Mummy never allowed us to get emotionally attached to her. I didn’t understand then, but it was probably because she knew we would have to go back to our respective birth families after a few years. She spared us the pain of separation.”
Syeda reconnected with Patience in her later years. She says, “Around that time, I got to know her better. She seemed like such a warm person. Mummy had become more spiritual, but she was still kind and humane. She still loved to teach us things.”
Patience’s nephew Nisar, who grew up in Karachi but now lives in the US, says, “I used to spend quite a bit of time with Aunty Patty, walking to the neighbourhood market with her. I had no idea she had once been a famous actress.”