Selar Shaik Sabu made his first film appearance in 1937 as a 12-year-old orphan, having landed the title role in Elephant Boy purely by chance after being plucked from Indian obscurity by a British location crew. His rise to international stardom was swift and dramatic with leading roles in Alexander Korda1s productions the Thief of Bagdad and Rudyard Kipling1s Jungle Book. But by the time he appeared in Powell & Pressburger1s Black Narcissus in 1947 that stardom was already guttering, and during the remaining 16 years of his tragically short life he was obliged to accept increasingly minor roles that mostly traded on former glories. Yet during those ten extraordinary years Sabu illuminated the screen in a way that remains without precedent. El. 2008.