Daily Times
July 10, 2021
Mohammad Yusuf Khan was born on December 11, 1922, in Peshawar in the house of a fruit merchant. In the late thirties, the family shifted to Bombay. Here, a chance meeting with Devika Rani, who was the boss of the famous Bombay Talkies, proved to be a turning point in his life. Recognizing his latent potential for acting, she selected him for a role in a new film Jawar Bhata, in which he shone to light with a screen name of Dilip Kumar. Though the film was a flop at the box office, it introduced the budding actor to the film world of which he was going to be the undisputed king for the next six decades.
Dilip Kumar | B Mathur/Reuters
The death of Dilip Kumar on Wednesday draws the curtain on the Golden Age of Hindi cinema. In six decades and in over 60 films, the actor extraordinaire played a range of characters with acute sensitivity and unmatched finesse. He is associated with some of the greatest Hindi films and the most memorable songs. His contributions to the craft of performance will reverberate for decades to come.
Dilip Kumar was felicitated with several awards, including the Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan, and Nishan-e-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s highest civilian honour. He is frequently described as the Tragedy King of Indian cinema, but his legacy is far too rich to be summarised by a single epithet.
Dilip Kumar (1922-2021): His contributions to cinema will reverberate for decades to come - Comment dawn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dawn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Shashikala tribute: Indefatigable to the very end
Twitter/FarhanAkthar
âThree female figures from the Hindi film world instigate me to slap them,â thus joked the outspoken film critic of yore, Devyani Chaubal. The female characters who set her off thus were: Manorama, Lalita Pawar and the just departed Shashikala Om Prakash Saigal.
The actress, from Solapur, Maharashtra, once told the film critic Fatima Zaidi of Shama, an Urdu magazine, Agar paapad belna koi muhavara hai aur woh kisi shakhs pe laagoo hota hai toh woh main hoon (if there s a phrase paapad belna in Hindi, that applies to me in toto)â. Shashikala was from a very poor family. It was difficult for her family to make both the ends meet. A precocious and sensitive girl, Shashikala decided to try her luck in Bombay as she had a keen interest in dancing, acting and singing.
Guru Dutt in Pyaasa (1957) | Guru Dutt Films/Ultra Media & Entertainment
For his most ambitious film yet,
Pyaasa, Guru Dutt wanted the best actor around. He wanted the ‘tragedy king’, the top star of the 1950s – Dilip Kumar. Dilip was known to take his craft extremely seriously and was a perfectionist to the core. He normally worked in one film at a time to give it his 100 per cent. This was exactly the kind of dedication Guru Dutt wanted from his
Pyaasa hero.
Guru went to meet Dilip Kumar and narrated the script of
Pyaasa to him. Dilip Kumar agreed to do the film in principle. He quoted his price of one-and-a-half-lakh rupees. Guru Dutt requested him to consider reducing the price as he had already scrapped the shoot he had done for the film, wasting a considerable amount. In reply, he was asked not to worry about the money. Now that Dilip Kumar was to take on the lead role, his loyal film distributors would take care of the finances. This perhaps