The Golden Era was shaped by an extraordinary constellation of stars. Visionary directors, gifted writers, brilliant music composers, immortal playback singers, evocative lyricists, versatile actors, graceful actresses, and countless skilled technicians together created films that continue to inspire audiences across the world.

This book is about select 500 artists of that era – from those who debuted well before India became independent to those who debuted just before the end of the era. Lot of artists could not be included due to size limitation.

What will you find in the book? Well, short biographies of those 500 artists which also includes songs filmed on them and some interesting trivia. You already know a lot about the well-known stars and they are of course included. However, there are also relatively less-known artists in the book. For instance:

• Dadasaheb Phalke: The ‘Father of Indian Cinema’, who had to process his films in the most rudimentary conditions.
• Alka, Radha Saluja, Kalpana Kartik: Heroines in just a few films.
• Deb Mukherjee, Romesh Sharma, Rakesh Pandey: Heroes in just a few films.
• Sapan-Jagmohan, Sonik-Omi, Usha Khanna: Talented music composers but you perhaps know just a couple of their songs.
• Ramesh Pant, Shahryar, Faruk Kaiser: Lyricists who wrote relatively few but very popular songs.
• Sudha Malhotra, Minoo Purushottam, Mubarak Begum: Female singers who sang songs which became superhits.
• Rashid Khan, Raj Mehra, CS Dubey: Character artists whom you have seen many times but didn’t know by their names.
• Gulshan Nanda, Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, Rahi Masoom Reza: Writers who gave hit films but were not as well-known as Salim-Javed.
• Laxmi Chhaya, Cuckoo, Minoo Mumtaz: Dancers who mesmerized the audience with their dancing skills but not as well-known as Helen.
• Mangesh Desai: Re-recordist, a very familiar name in film titles.