How a Black Man From Missouri Passed as an Indian Pop Star
Korla Pandit's true identity wasn't discovered until after his death.
By John Turner
Turning on the TV in Los Angeles in 1949, you might have come face-to-face with a young man in a jeweled turban with a dreamy gaze accentuated by dark eye shadow. Dressed in a fashionable coat and tie, Korla Pandit played the piano and the organ—sometimes both at once—creating music that was both familiar and exotic.
According to press releases from the time, Pandit was born in New Delhi, India, the son of a Brahmin government worker and a French opera singer. A prodigy on the piano, he studied music in England and later moved to the United States, where he mastered the organ at the University of Chicago. Not once in 900 performances did he speak on camera, preferring instead to communicate with viewers via that hypnotic gaze.
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In June of 2001, a friend sent me a story in Los Angeles Magazine written by R.J. Smith called “The Many Faces of Korla Pandit.” I started reading the article with excitement, which was soon followed by a clouded curiosity and later capped with a disclosure that shook what I knew about him (which apparently wasn’t that much because the name he was born with was John Roland Redd). I shared the article with a fellow KGO producer, Eric Christensen, who grew up in San Francisco and remembered his mother saying she was mesmerized by Pandit’s eyes, which seemed to see right through her.
We agreed that Pandit’s true story was astonishing, tragic, and yet illuminating—the foundation for a movie and a true American archetype of self-invention. Unbeknownst to the rest of us, he had actually been one of the first African-American television stars. Twelve years later, when we were both retired, Eric and I decided to use our pensions and social security to make that movie.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-a-black-man-from-missouri-passed-as-an-indian-pop-star
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