LILAMANI KAPOOR NEE RAJASOORIYA
WHO SHOT INTO FAME AS DANCER AND CELEBRITY DIES IN LONDON AT THE AGE
OF 80
By Walter Jayawardhana
Lilamani Kapoor nee Rajasooriya, the former Ceylon Tourist Board employee
whose talent, charm and beauty took her to fame wealth and celebrity
circles in Europe has died in London at the age of eighty, the London
Times announced in a half a page obituary .
Moving in such celebrity circles as Princess Margaret’s set in
London her friends included such famous men as Marc Chagall, Jean-Paul
Sartre, the priapic aristocrat Dado Ruspoli ,Jean Cocteau and Steve
McQueen.
In the fifties Marlon Brando was so taken by her beauty , proposed
to her , but she famously turned it down. The London Times wrote: “
Marlon Brando was much taken by her and proposed marriage. When she
turned him down, he moved on to her rival for the lead in The Mountain
(1956), Anna Kashfi, who would bear him his son Christian (who died
on January 26).”
Born at Kadugannwa , beautiful Lilamani shot into fame when her smiling
face appeared on the cover of an Italian magazine and later took Italy
by storm when she mesmerized Italians by her “Bharatha Natyam.”
The following is the obituary The Times published on February 2:
“There was something of The Arabian Nights about Lilamani Kapoor's
enchanting and exotic life, one through which this latterday Scheherazade
seemed to float with her feet barely touching the ground. Cosseted from
birth by wealth, blessed with talent as a dancer, surrounded by famous
friends, she remained nonetheless the embodiment of unaffected simplicity.
“Though fortified by her faith in happy endings, she was also
frequently the daring architect of her own destiny. In the late 1940s
she scandalised her native Ceylon by leaving her husband, the biscuit
heir Nicky Seneviratne, for the Italian film director Giulio Petroni,
whom she had met while both were employed by the island's nascent tourist
board. As if being a divorced and working woman was not bad enough,
theirs was an interracial union, and when Petroni tried to take her
to whites-only venues such as Colombo's racecourse or smart hotels she
was refused entry.
In 1951 they married and moved to Italy, where she enjoyed a stroke
of fortune. Henri Cartier-Bresson had been commissioned by Epoca, an
Italian magazine, to devote an issue to photographing Asia. He chose
his portrait of Lilamani, a noted but unself-conscious beauty, for the
cover. When her ship docked in Naples, her face was on newsstands all
over Italy.
Thanks to her husband's showbusiness connections she soon became a
star. From childhood she had studied Bharata Natyam, the classical religious
dance of southern India, which combines elegant and rhythmic movement
of the body with visual expression. She was considered a great exponent
of the form, and now captivated Italy with her performances in its provincial
theatres, the purveyors of mass entertainment to a country still largely
without television. She often danced with Ram Gopal, the “Nijinsky
of India”.
Soon Lilamani was presenting a nightly arts programme on television
- the first in a long line of foreign beauties to prosper in Italy in
that medium - and was a fixture in Rome's dolce vita. Her friends included
Marc Chagall, Jean-Paul Sartre, the priapic aristocrat Dado Ruspoli
and Jean Cocteau, who painted her. She also had several minor roles
in films, most notably as a maharani in Roman Holiday (1953). Marlon
Brando was much taken by her and proposed marriage. When she turned
him down, he moved on to her rival for the lead in The Mountain (1956),
Anna Kashfi, who would bear him his son Christian (who died on January
26).
“By now Lilamani's marriage to Petroni was foundering, and she
was also distressed by the death of her daughter by her first husband,
who had come to live in Rome.
While working for the Indian Embassy she accepted the offer of going
for a drive with a handsome young man she had met on the building's
steps: he turned out to be the evening's guest of honour, Shiv Kapoor,
a wealthy shipowner from a princely family in Assam. They married in
1958 and settled in London.
“Although disappointed at having to give up her dancing, for which
her husband perceived there was not an audience in Fifties England,
they shared a common interest in the Indian arts (though only English
as a language). They were also a prominent social couple, whose friends
ranged from sporting peers to Stephen Spender and Princess Margaret's
set. At one stage the Queen was said to be thinking of buying their
country home, Buckhurst Park, near Ascot, as a wedding gift for her
sister. Instead it was acquired by King Hussein of Jordan, although
not before featuring in 1959 in the first Whicker's World programme.
“The Kapoors also commissioned a futuristic house at Virginia
Water, Surrey, made just from stone and wood. This they later let to
Diana Dors, and it became the scene of bacchanalian parties before the
actress decamped, owing thousands to them in rent.
“The half-Tamil, half-Sinhalese daughter of a family with extensive
interests in tea and Colombo's docks, Lilamani Rajasooriya was born
at Kadugannawa, near Kandy, in 1927. She was educated at a convent,
which gave her a lifelong hatred of nuns, and then eased into an arranged
marriage to her first husband. Following the birth of her two sons,
the Kapoors moved to Switzerland for tax reasons and then, in the Rolls-Royce
Silver Cloud, back to Rome in the late Sixties. There Lilamani Kapoor
was at her happiest, as part of a bohemian circle of jet-setters, becoming
especially close to Steve McQueen.
“Despite the style in which she lived, she - in common with many
rich people in the post-Fascist Italy of the Fifties - had seen no contradiction
in becoming sympathetic to communism. Generous of spirit, optimistic
and never judgmental, she was also perhaps a touch naive at times, and
in 1966 this led to her playing a part in orchestrating the escape from
prison of the communist spy George Blake. She signed a deal to write
a book about this, but was advised that it would not be in her best
interests to publish.
“Yet if what struck people was her vivacity and the charm of her
smile, she was also intelligent and determined, and in the 1970s she
successfully extricated her brother from prison in Sri Lanka during
the insurgency.
“Later she concentrated on charity work, and on holding court
at the Dorchester, to where she would bring Asian friends to meet Barbara
Cartland, whose chaste tales of romance suited her view of life.
“In recent years, Parkinson's disease had made her more reclusive,
although she derived great comfort from her Buddhist beliefs.
“Shiv Kapoor died in 1987. Her sons survive her.
“Lilamani Kapoor, dancer, was born on July 26, 1927. She died
on December 27, 2007, aged 80”
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