Anna Kashfi
| Anna Kashfi | |
|---|---|
Kashfi in Night of the Quarter Moon (1959)
|
|
| Born |
Joan O'Callaghan September 30, 1934 Darjeeling, British India |
| Died | August 16, 2015 (aged 80) Woodland, Washington, U.S. |
| Resting place | Kalama IOOF Cemetery, Kalama, Washington, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1956–1963 |
| Spouse(s) |
Marlon Brando (m. 1957; div. 1959) James Hannaford (m. 1974; his death 1986) |
| Children | Christian Devi Brando |
Anna Kashfi (30 September 1934 – 16 August 2015) was an Indian-born Welsh raised American film actress who had a brief Hollywood career in the 1950s.
Kashfi was born as Joan O'Callaghan in Darjeeling, India, to William Patrick O'Callaghan, a traffic superintendent on the Indian State railways, who was from London but of Irish descent, and his wife, Phoebe. She was raised in Calcutta until she was 13, when the family relocated to Cardiff, Wales.
By the age of 22 Joan O'Callaghan had transformed herself into the exotic ethnic Indian model and actress Anna Kashfi, using a name invented by her and Glyn Mortimer, the head of a London modeling agency. As Mortimer told Parade magazine for its 1959 investigation into Kashfi's past, "Kashfi was the name of a dear friend of mine. Joan picked the name Anna from Joanna [sic], which she apparently had used from time to time".
The matter of Kashfi's ethnic heritage has remained in question. Both her English-born parents maintained she was their biological daughter, born, her father told Parade magazine in 1959, "to my wife in 1934 when I was employed by the Bengal-Nagupur railway as a station master". Parade stated that its investigation determined that "her baptismal certificate bears this out" and furthermore stated that she had a brother, Bosco Brian Patrick O'Callaghan, who was then attending a technical college in Cardiff.
However, upon her 1957 marriage to Marlon Brando a year after adopting her stage name, Kashfi failed to list either on her marriage license, instead stating her real father was one Devi Kashfi and biological mother named Selma Ghose. In an October 14, 1957, wedding day interview with The New York Times (entitled "Kashfi Still Enigma: License Does Not List Welsh Couple As Parents"), a friend of the bride was quoted as stating that Kashfi's purported Indian father had died six weeks before the ceremony.
Nevertheless, the O'Callaghans were adamant that Kashfi was their child, and William O'Callaghan was quoted in Time magazine as saying, "That's our daughter, and both me and missus were born in London."
Parade reported that Kashfi could have chosen the surname Ghose for her putative mother from the owners of The Maharajah, a London shop where she worked as a model. She also worked as a model in the London fur salon of Henry Noble in Regent Street.
In her 1979 book, Brando for Breakfast, Kashfi retreated halfway and claimed she is half-Indian, maintaining that rather than William O'Callaghan being her real father he was in effect her stepfather. She stated her biological father was Indian and she was the result of an "unregistered alliance" between him and her mother. When questioned earlier in life about her daughter's heritage, her mother had told the press "There is no Indian blood in my family or my husband's family", which indeed rules out her ancestry and O'Callaghan's, but does admit the logical possibility of Anna's father having been Indian. Film director Edward Dmytryk, who directed the actress in her first film, stated in a New York Times interview (entitled "Kashfi Called Welsh") the day before her wedding to Brando that he knew her real surname was Irish but assumed that she was half-Indian.
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