Sabu and the Korda Brothers' Adventure Cinema
How a thirteen-year-old stable boy in Mysore became Hollywood's most prominent South Asian star
One of cinema's most extraordinary discovery stories: in 1936, the Hungarian-British producer-director team of Alexander, Vincent, and Zoltán Korda was filming Rudyard Kipling's Toomai of the Elephants in Mysore. They needed a teenage actor who could handle real elephants. A 13-year-old stable boy named Sabu Dastagir, orphaned son of an elephant-handler, fit the role perfectly. The result was Elephant Boy (1937), and Sabu's screen career launched almost overnight.
The discovery
The Korda brothers had a documentary filmmaker named Robert Flaherty on the ground in Mysore for over a year shooting elephant footage. Sabu (born Selar Shaik Sabu in 1924) was working at a Maharaja's elephant stables. Flaherty selected him from dozens of local boys based on his calm authority with the animals. Sabu had never acted, never been to school, and spoke limited English. Within two years, he was an international film star.
The Korda series
The Korda brothers built a series of adventure features around Sabu:
Elephant Boy (1937) — Sabu's debut. Loosely adapted from Kipling. Sabu plays Toomai, who follows the elephants into the deep jungle to fulfill a Hindu prophecy. The picture's mix of documentary and dramatic footage was unusual for 1937.
The Drum (1938) — A Northwest Frontier adventure set on the India-Afghanistan border. Sabu plays Prince Azim, son of a murdered ruler, working with British forces to overthrow his uncle the usurper. The picture's colonial politics are now uncomfortable, but Sabu's performance is strong.
The Thief of Bagdad (1940) — The Korda brothers's masterpiece. Sabu plays Abu, the thief who befriends the deposed Prince Ahmad in their adventures across a fantastical Baghdad. The Technicolor cinematography won an Oscar. The picture's special effects (the giant genie, the flying horse, the all-seeing eye in the Temple of the Dawn) were the most sophisticated of the era. Considered by many critics the finest Arabian-Nights fantasy ever filmed.
Jungle Book (1942) — Adapted from Kipling. Sabu plays Mowgli. The film's location work (filmed in Florida and California standing in for India) and animal performances were extraordinary for the era. The picture was nominated for four Oscars.
The American years
After Jungle Book, Sabu signed with Universal Pictures. His Universal features — Arabian Nights (1942), White Savage (1943), Cobra Woman (1944) — were Technicolor escapism aimed at wartime American audiences. The pictures are now period curiosities; their cultural politics have aged poorly, but Sabu's charisma carries them.
The WWII service
Sabu became a U.S. citizen in 1944 and served in the U.S. Army Air Forces as a tail gunner, flying combat missions over Europe in B-24 bombers. He earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. The military service is rarely discussed in his filmography, but it speaks to a personal trajectory more remarkable than any of his screen roles.
The decline
After the war, Sabu's career declined. By the late 1940s, he was aging out of teenage adventure roles, and Hollywood had no clear path for a South Asian leading man approaching his late twenties. He continued working — in Britain, Italy, and the United States — through the 1950s, but never in pictures of the prestige of the Korda series. He died of a heart attack at age 39 in 1963.
The public-domain Sabu
The Korda-era British productions have complicated public-domain status. Elephant Boy (1937) and The Drum (1938) are widely available in public-domain prints. The Thief of Bagdad (1940) is partially public-domain depending on the print and region. Jungle Book (1942) remains under copyright through subsequent rights acquisitions.
The legacy
Sabu was Hollywood's most prominent South Asian leading man for two decades. His career was the rare counter-narrative to studio Hollywood's near-complete erasure of South Asian leading roles. Subsequent South Asian actors in Hollywood — from Persis Khambatta in the 1970s to Aziz Ansari and Mindy Kaling today — work in an industry that almost completely forgot Sabu existed.
Where to start
Start with Elephant Boy (1937) for Sabu's debut and the documentary-flavored Korda style at its origins. Then move to The Thief of Bagdad (1940) for the genuine masterpiece of the series — one of the great fantasy films ever made, with Sabu at the height of his charm and the Korda brothers's production at its most ambitious.
