Born in 1924, Sabu’s history is something of a mystery. Little is known about him to be true, and what is known sounds like the plot to one of his jungle adventure stories. His real name, depending on your source, was either Sabu Dastagir, Selar Shaik Sabu or Sabu Francis. His father was a mahout (elephant driver), who died shortly before Sabu’s discovery and eventual casting in Elephant Boy. His mother died when he was very young, and his only remaining family was a brother who helped manage his career, before they opened a furniture store together as things inevitably turned south professionally.
But we're here to limit our scope to the three films included in this set, and they are: Elephant Boy, The Drum, and Jungle Book. Two-thirds of them are charming pieces of a bygone cinematic era, and the third a cringe-inducing piece of colonialist propaganda. They're films built around him as a star presence, and one that is something of a naive innocent preserved in celluloid. It's also worth noting that the exclamation point in the title is a well earned piece of naming. All of the joy you can expect to find is right there in that punctuation.
Lots of actors make debut film appearances with roles that perfectly match their skills and charisma, but Sabu's role here is a piece of alchemy and serendipity captured on camera. Inspired by Rudyard Kipling's "Toomai of the Elephants," one of the many non-Mowgli stories in the Jungle Books, Elephant Boy provides Sabu with the first of his enjoyable, charming adventure stories.
In many ways the story of Elephant Boy is reflective of Sabu's own journey from obscurity to international movie stardom. The story concerns Toomai, an orphan who dreams of becoming an elephant-handler, but is told that this dream will not come to pass until he sees the elephants dancing. Just change out the dream from becoming a mahout to the movies and you have a story that bounces back and forth consistently between subject and star, including Sabu's own stunt work and tricks.While he's not quite a capable actor yet, what he has is an infectious exuberance and naturalism in front of the camera. This naturalism makes some of his stiff-lipped British co-stars sound tin-eared and affected in their line deliveries. His joyous nature and mega-watt charisma begin to overtake you as the film goes on. His presence will elevate several later films into something greater by sheer force of will, and that oomph is in bloom here.
As a narrative and film as a whole, Elephant Boy is best when it merely relaxes into observing Sabu interact with the elephants. Zoltan Korda was hired to direct the dramatic tissue connection the various location-specific footage of animals in the wild shot by Flaherty. The film needs a strong center to hold it all together, and Sabu provides this in spades.
In the end, Elephant Boy may be slight, but it’s a rousing adventure story nonetheless. The best moments are ones in which the narrative takes a backseat to enjoying the moment. The relationship between Sabu and the elephant is a unique spin on the boy-and-his-dog narratives of other films. And the various bits of animal footage is wondrous to watch, it might not add anything of importance to the plot, but the gives the film a sense of truth in location and narrative that is important. After watching this thoroughly enjoyable Saturday matinee adventure, it’s very easy to see why Sabu would go on to become on the strangest, but most charismatic of movie stars in the forties.
After the enormous success of Elephant Boy, producer Alexander Korda signed Sabu to an exclusive contract, smart move, and rushed this film into production, which was maybe a little too rushed. The Drum is the first film to give Sabu above the title billing, but he’s really more of a featured player in an awkward piece of British propaganda. It has its moments, but a nasty aftertaste of pro-colonialism ultimately sinks it.
The Drum, or Drums as it was released in the U.S., tells the story of a brewing uprising between two sides of an Indian family. On one side, Prince Azim (Sabu) who favors the British, and is a smiling, happy-go-lucky example of the colonized, while his uncle, Prince Ghul (Raymond Massey, in brownface), wants to kick the British out. Despite Sabu’s once-again winning presence and charming performance, my sympathies couldn’t help but lie with his uncle.Despite being routinely asked to side with the pro-Empire side of the equation, I kept thinking about how the riotous fury of Pince Ghul and his followers was understandable, more empathetic and sympathetic than the questionable material you heard coming out of Sabu’s mouth. I don’t blame him, he was only a thirteen-year-old. Later films would drop this political baggage and go back to the fantastical, thankfully.
The Drum does have a few bright spots. Ignoring the ugly realities of white actors done up as people of color, Massey’s performance is another hissable and enjoyable turn from an actor who excelled at playing devious characters. Roger Livesey’s a smart, dashing hero in the central role, and Valerie Hobson is warm and nurturing as his wife. The action scenes are daring, and moments of suspense are well-made. The cinematography, once the crown jewel of the film, looks like it was once impressive, but the time and care has not gone into properly restoring it. What remains looks great, but I wonder how much better it could be if someone had taken the time to restore it to its proper magnificence.
In all, The Drum has individual parts that work exceptionally well, they’re just in service of a whole that is questionable. No, it’s not questionable. It’s just ugly, a bitter “Sun Never Sets” fantasy wrapped up in a pretty candy coating. Sabu deserved better treatment than this. It’s no surprise to me to learn that audiences in India reacted violently to this film’s politics. I don’t blame them.
After blowing fellow child actor, Desmond Tester, out of the water with his naturalism in stark contrast to Tester’s stage-bound acting techniques, Sabu went on to star in his two best feature films. 1940’s remake of The Thief of Bagdad’s success can’t be solely credited to him, but since so much of the film is spent with him, a good chunk of its eternal optimism, mischievous spirit, and fun-loving vibe can be. And those same attributes here in 1942’s Jungle Book, once again returning to the world of Rudyard Kipling to tackle the author’s most-beloved character, Mowgli, the final film in the Korda-Sabu pairing.
This film holds a tremendous amount of nostalgia for me. As a child, I probably watched this version more often than the famous Disney film. Something about this version just stayed with me more.
Perhaps it was the brightly colored sets? One of the great things about cinema is its ability to create fantastical, imagined lands out of real places. This India has little standing in reality, but it is a creation of a child’s imagination. This opulent, magical jungle is the type that the mind conjures up while reading an adventure story. Shot by W. Howard Greene and Lee Games, Jungle Book is a technical marvel. Its combination of matte paintings, real sets, and Technicolor vibrancy add up to something whimsical and daring. It’s a richly realized world, one that is easy to get lost in.
Or perhaps it was Sabu? Looking back on it, he was probably one of my earliest cinematic crushes. His lean muscular body on proud display, and a handsome face with full lips and big, bright eyes probably caused some deep stirrings in my boyhood that I didn’t understand until later. His acting has also improved by this time, essaying the change from feral wild child to uneasily domesticated youth with ease and consummate skill. Sabu’s athleticism and charisma matured as he was, with this film being the perfect template for his particular brand of star persona.Maybe it was all of the animals, both real and animatronic? Among the opulent sets are several engaging sequences in which trained animals are let loose. Granted, certain ones are entirely fake, both by design of the screenplay and by how dangerous the actual creatures were. Baloo the bear, Bagheera the panther, Raksha and Father Wolf, Shere Khan the tiger, and the various monkeys and deer are all live animals. They are anthropomorphized to a point, but nowhere near the way that they would become in Disney’s version. We’re told Mowgli can talk to the animals, and as the film progresses we begin to hear their voices. Mainly, two snake characters, the python Kaa and the old cobra Nag, are fakeries and heavy talkers.
For obvious reasons, these two characters are large rubber creatures. There’s something charming and quaint about these obviously artificial snakes. It adds to the mystique and fantasy of the film, in much the same way the dinosaurs do in King Kong. These are not real creatures, but imagined approximations of those creatures. While a dastardly effete villain in Disney’s version, Kaa is one of Mowgli’s trusted allies here. While Nag warns him of the dangers of the treasure he guards, giving Mowgli a talk about the destructive powers of man’s greed.
If Jungle Book has a flaw, it’s the third act which stretches on just a few minutes too long. I think shaving about ten minutes from this final section would have tightened up the pace. After ripping through at great speed and clarity through the various other adventures, our focus is pulled away from Mowgli for too long here, and we realize just how titanic Sabu was to making this entire enterprise work so smoothly.
Granted, the finale takes place in the beautifully wrought decaying ruins of a maharaja’s palace, so even if the pace is too slowly there’s still something beautiful to look at. Even better is the fiery scenes in which Mowgli eventually rejects “man’s world” and returns to the jungle. Mainly a grand spectacle, which is not a knock against the movie, Jungle Book is the kind of fine entertainment that rarely gets made anymore. I was only too happy to discover that the nostalgic glow this movie possessed in my memory was well-served. It is one that we should cherish.
His early death left a strange legacy of films behind, and a even more complicated image. Too often his films cast him in the role of happily colonized, the smiling brown help to the noble white hero. But there’s something enticing about Sabu when he’s on the screen. Director Michael Powell said he possessed a “wonderful grace” about him, which is true. Being very attractive didn’t hurt, a fact which his films often capitalized on by presenting his toned, lean body in minimal wardrobe as he got older. No, there was more to him than just natural charisma and good looks, there was just a quirky spark about Sabu that the camera loved. In the early years he got by more on charm and charisma than major dramatic abilities, but he learned very quickly. Eventually, he was capable of strong leading performances that were the stimulus of the films.His glory years were brief, and his fade-out was long. Yet there’s still something about a small handful of his adventures that endear themselves to you. They’re great pieces of pop movie-making, and a few of them are rightly considered classics. It’s a shame that the post-WWII years are loaded with truly terrible films, as Sabu, when given the chance, was capable of delivering some commendable adult performances.
While trying to mount a big screen comeback in the early 60s, after giving up the film industry for a job performing in the circus with elephants, Sabu died of a surprise heart attack at age 39. He left behind three masterpieces, a few highly enjoyable romps, and a film image that's politically and racially loaded. It's always damning being the first of anything, the weight of expectations upon you is too much and you're somewhere never good enough, but Sabu did his best as the world’s first Indian movie star. Count me in as a fan.
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