Gulacha Ganapati (1953)

Sentimental melodrama featuring noted Marathi author, playwright and actor Deshpande in his best known film. He plays the gullible fool Narya, in love with the poor Leela (Chitra). He spends most of his time enacting fantasies drawn from popular romance fiction (shown in several sequences in the film’s first half that recreate well known Indian film and stage genres). Hired by a stage troupe to play a working class hero, he is later forced under duress, by the villain Sudarshan (Kale), to actually play that role in real life, so that he becomes a political leader. In the end Leela saves him from the bad guys. A classic 50s Marathi hit marrying the genres of realism, melodrama and comedy, the film is also known for its several song hits, notably Bhimsen Joshi’s bhajan Indrayani kathi, which later became a regular part of that noted classical singer’s stage repertoire.