India, March 4 -- The history of Indian cinema began in the early 1910s when Dadasaheb Phalke pioneered motion pictures. But it was the advent of the talkies created a new phenomenon - the cine icons. Today, we call them superstars. KL Saigal, Karan Dewan, and Ashok Kumar were among the first screen icons in Indian cinema. And their counterpart was a teenager who ruled the screens, setting records that were broken only eight decades later. (Also read: India's first crorepati singer challenged Viceroys, travelled by personal train, out-earned Lata Mangeshkar, Md Rafi)

Mumtaz Shanti was one of the earliest successful female stars in what would become Bollywood. Mumtaz began her career as a child artist in Punjabi films in 1937, before movi...