Sabu: Mysore's 'Slumdog', Hollywood millionaire

If there is an Oscar for life-time achievement of an actor in real life, it should have gone to Selar Shaik Sabu. His was a rag-to-riches story, of a mahout boy from Mysore who made it to Hollywood in the 30s. The Sabu story has the potential for a film that deserves to be made with Hollywood collaboration. Sabu, brought up in poverty in Mysore, and discovered by a British film maker, made his million in California.

Britain’s documentary maker Robert Flaherty with his wife Frances, were in Mysore with a film crew , wanting to do a feature film based on Toomai of the Elephants, a story by Rudyard Kipling. They were looking for a native boy for the lead role in Elephant Boy. They spotted him at the elephants’ stable , where the Palace elephants were being maintained. It was lunch time and senior mahouts were away,leaving the young boy in charge of the stable. The boy, in a lungi and wearing a white turban , was excited on seeing the foreign visitors, and showed off the way he handled the gentle giants with much ease.

The Fleherty couple, ended their search, saying, “here's the boy we're looking for”
Writing about the couple’s encounter with this lad ,Robert’s biographer Paul Roather, recalled how they felt about the incident. “ My most treasured memory of this day is of Sabu. He made his appearance slowly astride on elephant, and there they stood in the middle of the very large compound for the world to see.---.The manner in which he handled the ponderous, lumbering elephant was enough to stir one’s confidence and trust in him”.

“I have found a gold mine” wired Flaherty to Mr Alexander Korda, producer of the Elephant Boy, who was in London. A good part of the film was shot in 1935 and 36 in the jungles around Mysore,with which Sabu was familiar. Since there was delay in completion of the Film , the team was asked to return to Britain, where rest of the film was shot, at the Denham studio in London.. The film was a box office hit and the performance of Sabu was universally praised; he became an instant star.

The New York Times review commented:"Sabu, the Indian boy is a sunny faced ,manly little youngster. His naturalness beneath the camera’s scrutiny should bring blushes to the faces of precocious wonder children of Hollywood”. Born in Karapura, the famous site of Khedda of yester-years in Heggadadevanakote taluk of Mysore District, on Jan 24,1924, Sabu was illiterate and an ophan, haaving lost his mother when he was in the cradle, and his mahout father, when he turned seven. He was the youngest stable boy in the Maharaja” ward.

Before his discovery by the British film maker Sabu who had not traveled beyond Mysore. After the success of The Elephant Boy Korda signed up Sabu on a long term contract. Sabu became the ward of the British Government and was given excellent schooling. His third film the The Thief of Bagdad was a smash hit . A grand fantasy with flying horses, magic carpets, the film was about a dashing youth helping out a deposed king to regain his throne and winning the hand of the prince.

When Kordas moved on to America, Sabu went with them ; became an American citizen in 1944 and embraced the Episcopalian faith. When Hollywood super stars like Gary Cooper and Ronald Reagan stepped out of the studio to fight against the Nazis in World War 11, Sabu also joined them as a gunner and was honoured for his courage and valour.

He married Actress Marilyn and had two children, Paul Sabu who established a Rock band Unit while Paul’s sister owned a stud farm in California. Sabu died young, at 39,of heart attack and his body was interred in the famous Forest Lawn Cemetery among other film personalities.

Earlier in life when Sabu returned to his home town, Mysore, in 1952 for a film shooting, his former mahout boy in the Palace elephant stable stayed as a guest of the Maharaja Sri Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar. That generation of people that grew up in Mysore with Sabu is no longer there. The Palace Elephant stable gave way,in 1960s, for a private hospital. But Sabu's memory and film legacy are kept alive, thanks to occasional screening of some of 22 films, in which he acted during his 28-film career,in some of the English film channels.