Nurnaningsih

Biography

In early October 1954 the Jakarta police summoned for questioning an actress whose photographs without clothes had been passing around the city since the middle of the summer. They had been taken by an unknown photographer. The prosecutor’s office also took an interest in the case.

Nurnaningsih was twenty-eight at the time, and she had been working in film for little more than a year.

She was born on 5 December 1925 at Darmo Hospital in Surabaya, in the Dutch East Indies, the second of eight children. Her father, Raden Kadjat Kartodarmodjo, traced his descent from Sultan Agung of Mataram; her mother, Raden Nganten Soekini Martindjung, from Prabu Brawijaya V. She had three brothers and four sisters. She left school in the first year of senior high school. She later said that she began dreaming of the cinema at fourteen, after seeing a film starring Roekiah. In 1945 she married the painter Kartono Yudhokusumo; the marriage ended in 1952. At twenty-five she moved to Jakarta and settled in a hut by the Ciliwung River.

Her debut came in 1953: in Usmar Ismail’s “Krisis” she played the leading lady, Ros, but was paid only 180 rupiah for the part. The comedy became the most successful Indonesian film since “Terang Boelan” (1937). That same year “Tjemburu” (“Jealous”) was also released. In 1954, in Djajakusuma’s “Harimau Tjampa” (“Tiger from Tjampa”), directed by D. Djajakusuma, she appeared half-nude. It was a contested time: artists and the censorship board were in a dispute over the limits of what was permitted. She told reporters: “I am not ruining art. I’m breaking away the old views of art that are still held in Indonesia.” Another film, “Klenting Kuning”, came out that year.

The public received the photographs with hostility: they were judged contrary to Eastern values, and in East Kalimantan her films were boycotted. “Kebun Binatang” (“Zoo”) was released in 1955, after which she vanished from public view.

For the next twelve years she wandered the archipelago. She worked as a sketch artist, performed on stage, taught English and Dutch, sewed, played the piano, sang and for six years played in goal for a football team. Few documents about these years seem to exist, and I cannot give details.

She returned to film in 1968 with a small part in “Djakarta, Hongkong, Macao”. Other bit parts followed, and in 1972 she took the leading role in “Seribu Janji Kumenanti” (“A Thousand Promises I Await”). She went on working in the 1970s and 1980s; her later films include “Kembang-Kembang Plastik” (“Plastic Flowers”, 1977), “Remang-Remang Jakarta” (“Dimness of Jakarta”, 1981) and “Malam Satu Suro” (“The Night of One Suro”, 1988).

Nurnaningsih died on 21 March 2004 at her daughter’s home in Tebet, in South Jakarta. She was buried at the Menteng Pulo War Cemetery.