Esther Victoria Abraham

As grand as her name sounds, so was her personality! Esther Victoria Abraham was born on 13 th December 1916 in Calcutta, West Bengal in a Jewish family. She is one of the most legendary figures in the golden age of Bollywood. She was a model, actress and India’s first ever film producer. She was the daughter of Reuben Abraham, a businessman living in Kolkata, and Matilda Isaac. She had three siblings from her father's first marriage and six siblings from her own parents' marriage. Esther studied in the Calcutta Girls High School but later transferred to St James which was a co- educational school and had a quite relaxed fee structure, which the family was able to afford. Esther understood that to be an all achieving idol student, she had to learn to excel in both studies and sports. She was a hockey champion and won many awards in the field of sports. She had a passion for drawing and on graduating from her school, she received a degree in the field of arts from the prestigious Cambridge University.

On completing her high school degree she started working as a pre-primary teacher at the Talmud Torah Boys School. Despite having completed a BEd degree, she didn’t want to teach and decided to pursue her dreams of working in the Indian cinema. Esther came from a family that was heavily invested in music and movies, and this made a lot of impression on her as a child.  Her film career started by chance, Esther was in Mumbai to watch her cousin Rose Erza work on the movie The Return of The Toofan Mail, where the director of the movie spotted a tall and gorgeous Esther on the set, impressed by her beauty she was asked to give a screen test, and this is how she got started. She was given the name ‘Pramila’ as her new Indian cinema name. She went on to star in super successful movies like Bhikaran, Ulti Ganga, Bhijli, Shahazadi, Our Darling Daughter and many more. When she was 31, she was pregnant with a child and still ended up becoming Miss India Miss India was a TV serial that was aired on Doord >> Read More... . In 1942, Esther became the first ever woman producer of India, when she founded a production house with her husband by the name of Silver Films. Esther Victoria Abraham died on 6 August 2006.