Must read: As a college student in what is now known as Mumbai, the Indian filmmaker Karan Bali watched the 1947 Hindi classic, Meera, a remake of the 1945 Tamil-language film of the same name, and loved it.

However, it was not until in 2004, while researching an article for his portal on Indian cinema, Upperstall, that he discovered the director of both films was an American, Ellis R. Dungan.

He ended up writing an article about the director for the website, but thoughts about Mr. Dungan's adventures kept recurring as he puzzled over why an American would spend 15 years in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to make movies during the 1930s and1940s. 
The full story here.