GREAT INDIANS

Dev Anand
A legend, then and always (1923-2011)

Movielore has it that star and movie moghul Ashok Kumar spotted Dev Anand outside Bombay Talkies’ Studio and cast him in a film. In reality, Dev Anand was getting on to a train, when writer Shahid Latif (late writer Ismat Chughtai’s husband) ran into him, and asked him to come to Bombay Talkies the next day. Dev met his idol Ashok Kumar face-to-face for the first time, and to compound his joy was offered the film Ziddi (1948), which Latif was directing with Kamini Kaushal as the leading lady. This film launched Dev as a star and had the hit song Marne ki duaen kyon maangoon sung by the producer’s brother Kishore Kumar. The two became great friends and for many years, Kishore Kumar sang almost exclusively for Dev. He had already done Prabhat’s Hum Ek Hain. Dev met Guru Dutt, who was then an assistant director at one of the studio’s corridors and found they were wearing each other’s shirts, due to a mix-up by the washerman. They became friends and made a promise that when Dev produced a film, Guru would direct, and if Guru got to direct a film first, Dev would star in it.
After Ziddi, the next film he did, Vidya (1948), will be remembered mainly because he met the heroine Suraiya, with whom Dev Anand would fall in love during the making of Jeet (1949). The romance went on clandestinely for a while, but her family did not approve, and after a few months, the two broke up. But while they were together, they did half a dozen films together and she labelled him as the Indian Gregory Peck.
Dev, who was by nature restless and also ahead of the times, decided very early in his career to set up his own production company. He borrowed money from one of his producers and launched Navketan–the longest-lasting independent banners in the world. The first film made under Navketan was Afsar, based on the play The Inspector General by Nikolai Gogol, a satire on corruption in a small town. It was directed by his brother Chetan Anand, who had done a stage play on the same story for IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association), and starred Dev and Suraiya. More importantly, the music was by Sachin Dev Burman, whose association with Dev and Navketan lasted for years. Strangely, there was no song picturised on Dev in this film, and the film did not do as well as expected.
But now that the production company had been established, it had to go on. Dev remembered his promise to Guru Dutt and invited him to direct a film for Navketan. The film was Baazi (1951). Chetan Anand discovered a pretty new girl called Mona Singha from Simla, who was screen-tested and cast in Baazi, along with popular actress Geeta Bali. Mona was renamed Kalpana Kartik and become the future Mrs. Dev Anand, while Geeta Bali was to marry Shammi Kapoor a few years later. The film had young singer Geeta Roy singing hits like Suno gajar kya gaaye and Tadbeer se bigdi hui taqdeer bana le– and director Guru Dutt got married to her in 1953. It was during the making of Taxi Driver that Dev quietly got married to Kalpana Kartik. During a break in the shooting, they sneaked off to a room in the studio, both walked across to the Registrar of Marriages; he put a ring on her finger, both signed the register and returned to the shoot. Only the cameraman noticed the ring on the finger, which was not there earlier. Kalpana Kartik did just five films, all under the Navketan Banner and retired from the scene.
Baazi also brought together the formidable talents of Sahir Ludhianvi and S D Burman and was a huge musical hit. It was one of the early Bollywood noir films, which had Dev playing a tramp whose gambling leads him to crime. It helped popularise the ‘Dev Anand style’—the hair style with a puff, the springy walk, the narrowing the eyes and special way of delivering lines, that made the star inimitable, yet the most mimicked of all time. He remained a rakish ‘young’ man to the end.

– Deepa Gahlot, Mumbai-based film and theatre critic.