Stardust in the mid 80s was pure tabloid gossip, full of innuendo and, as my septuagenarian aunt used to say, "just filth!"
Excerpt:
FILMLAND’S BIGGEST TURN-ON! JPG WHY THE MEN CAN’T KEEP THEIR HANDS OFF HER! JPG SRIDEVI
She hit the city, and how! Arms akimbo, staring a challenge down (at the women?) from the lurid posters of ‘Himmatwala’. With chubby thighs squeezed into a mini skirt and a bosom bursting at the seams, she sure left most of the men shell-shocked and drooling.
‘Himmatwala’ was the first of Sridevi’s films to zoom way up the box-office charts. Along the path to stardom, in ‘Tohfa’, ‘Mawaali’, ‘Jaag Utha Insan’, ‘Maqsad’, and now, ‘Qaidi’, she has shed her inhibitions (if any), and a few pieces of irrelevant clothing. The result is that with a mere shake of a shapely derriere, she’s nudged out Jaya Prada and Rekha from the No. 1 position, on the oomph-list at least. Sridevi literally has the Bombay film industry wound round her voluptuous little finger.
I was maha intrigued. The gauche girl with a squashy nose in ‘Solva Sawan’ (she was definitely material then for a Sheri Louise ‘before’ ad) was no candidate for superstardom, I’d thought. Her attempt at storming the Bombay film industry bombed—the film was a flop..."
