{"id":43914,"date":"2015-11-12T16:07:43","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T16:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=43914"},"modified":"2015-11-12T16:07:43","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T16:07:43","slug":"lib-at-large-documentary-tells-odd-story-of-korla-pandit-godfather-of-exotica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=43914","title":{"rendered":"Lib at Large: Documentary tells odd story of Korla Pandit, \u2018godfather of exotica\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lib at Large: Documentary tells odd story of Korla Pandit, \u2018godfather of exotica\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Marin Independent Journal<\/a>
\nSan Rafael, California
\n2015-10-29<\/p>\n

Paul Liberatore<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Marin has been home to some fascinating characters over the decades, but probably no one has been as mysterious and exotic as Korla Pandit<\/a>, an organ-playing, turban-wearing sex symbol of 1950s daytime TV.<\/p>\n

In a 1975 article in the Independent Journal<\/em>, reporter Ernest Murphy described Pandit as \u201ca puzzle inside an enigma wrapped in a turban.\u201d<\/p>\n

While housewives swooned over his doe-eyed gaze on the music show he starred in for KGO-TV in San Francisco<\/a>, he lived with his wife and two children in the erstwhile Hall McAllister mansion in Kentfield<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He said the 70-year-old house reminded him of his privileged childhood in New Delhi<\/a> as the son of a Brahmin<\/a> priest father and a French opera singer mother. The grand old house enhanced his mystique as \u201cthe godfather of exotica<\/a>,\u201d but it was a kind of false front, a facade. He was only renting it temporarily before its owner had it torn down.<\/p>\n

Two years after Pandit\u2019s 1998 death in a Petaluma<\/a> hospital at age 77, journalist R.J. Smith<\/a> exposed his true identity in a 2001 article in Los Angeles Magazine<\/em>, \u201cThe Many Faces of Korla Pandit<\/a>.\u201d His fans were shocked to learn that their swami dream boat wasn\u2019t born in New Delhi, far from it. He wasn\u2019t even Indian. He was a light-skinned African American, born in Columbia, Missouri<\/a>, in a family of seven children. His father was pastor of the largest black church in town and his mother was of Creole heritage. His real name was John Roland Redd. He attended a segregated school in Missouri<\/a> and showed talent as a pianist and later as an organist…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lib at Large: Documentary tells odd story of Korla Pandit, \u2018godfather of exotica\u2019 Marin Independent Journal San Rafael, California 2015-10-29 Paul Liberatore Marin has been home to some fascinating characters over the decades, but probably no one has been as mysterious and exotic as Korla Pandit, an organ-playing, turban-wearing sex symbol of 1950s daytime TV. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245,8,6462,20],"tags":[21152,21089,21088,21855,21854],"class_list":["post-43914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-john-redd","tag-john-roland-redd","tag-korla-pandit","tag-marin-independent-journal","tag-paul-liberatore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43914"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43915,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43914\/revisions\/43915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}