An Indian printer who worked closely with my husband for many years and became a family friend once phoned when he found out Dev Anand was in London to launch his autobiography. Ajay had never asked us for a favour but wanted to know if there was any way we could introduce him to Dev Anand. We not only met him but even joined him for dinner. A truly memorable experience for Ajay and his wife.
I was privileged to meet Dev Anand several times in India and in London. I was always charmed and delighted by this iconic star and perfect gentleman while he was amused to meet a foreigner who was his fan and knew his oeuvre.
I was puzzled. Why is Ajay such a fan of Dev Anand, who was older than his parents rather than of the stars of the 80s/90s? This might be explained by personal reasons but I believe it was not just that Dev Anand was stylish and elegant or a good actor or that he starred in great films with memorable songs but also about his being the modern Indian.
Dev Anand was a mobile, modern Indian who felt equally at ease in India and overseas. He was able to move around the modern city, Bombay (now Mumbai), interacting with people from all levels of society. He was eloquent in both Hindi and English. These are the same reasons why I have always liked Dev Anand.
I don’t think it’s possible to rank the three great stars of the 1950s: Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar. I certainly couldn’t choose among the three. I admire Raj Kapoor as perhaps the most important person for shaping the style of the mainstream Hindi cinema while the latter was such an elegant actor.
All three had family roots on the other side of what became the border in 1947. Raj Kapoor was the pan-Indian hero, a villager who learnt the evil ways of the city to fit into the high society, taking clothes from the ‘New Bharat Laundry’ to look the part in Shree 420, 1955). Dilip Kumar was the tangewala in Naya Daur, 1957; a Mughal prince in Mughal-e Azam, 1960; or a bandit in Gunga Jumna, 1961.
Dev Anand often appeared as himself from film to film, with his distinctive hair puff and stylish western clothes – a jacket and a pair of trousers, often with an insouciantly tied scarf. Although the look was often similar, well-suited to an urban and urbane hero, he played a wide variety of roles convincingly. Despite his good looks, he was rarely just a romantic star, often having an edge to him or even clearly negative shades, playing complex characters who were rarely all bad or all good.
While Raj Kapoor sang and danced and Dilip Kumar had a contained energy in his movements, Dev Anand didn’t really dance, looking rather ungainly when he had to move and was much better-seated, sometimes at a piano ‘Khwab ho tum ya koi haqeeqat‘, Teen Deviyan, 1965, or just walking along the Bombay/Mumbai seafront in ‘Leke pehla pehla pyar’, CID, 1956.
Dev Anand in ‘Leke Pehla Pehla Pyar’ from the movie, CID.
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Dev Anand’s offscreen persona was also that of the modern Indian citizen created by the new state of India. Born Dharamdev Pishorimal Anand, he has written his autobiography and his life is well-known. Born in an educated Punjabi Khatri family in Gurdaspur, he had moved to study in Lahore before Partition where he studied English literature. (Offscreen, he spoke in a very clear, somewhat British accent, in his stylish phrasing.) Like others of a similar background, such as the Sahnis and the Chopras, his brothers were also part of his cultural and working world, so Bhisham and Balraj Sahni or B.R. and Yash Chopra, Dev Anand was shaped by and worked with Chetan Anand and Vijay Anand.
Dev Anand has talked about his romances, but the only two worth mentioning here are his famous romance with his co-star Suraiya in the late 1940s, something he himself talked about, given how formational she was to his career. They were said to have split because her grandmother refused to allow her to marry a Hindu. He married another co-star, Kalpana Kartik (Mona Singha), in 1954, who stepped back from her career after marriage. She remained a practising Christian, and they were married for almost 60 years until his death.
Dev Anand worked in over 100 films, starting in Prabhat Studios in 1946, then active as an actor, producer, director, and writer for the rest of his life. He co-founded Navketan Films with Chetan Anand where he made some of his best films.
Many aspects of Dev Anand’s long career which I particularly enjoyed were the fruit of his working with other talented individuals, including some of the great female stars of his era, but here I look at his work with his brothers and others at Navketan Films and the songs that were picturised on him composed by S.D. Burman as these define Dev Anand.
In the 1950s, Dev Anand was in several films which define the style of ‘Bombay Noir’, giving a certain grittiness in the depiction of the underworld or low life of the city of Bombay, mostly at night, which nevertheless looks glamorous and alluring with dangerous and seductive women, often vamps performing in nightclubs. These crime thrillers often feature cars, guns, phones such as in the fabulous opening sequences of CID. Most of these films were made with Navketan Films. My favourites include those directed by Chetan Anand (Taxi Driver, 1954), Guru Dutt (Baazi, 1951), Vijay Anand (Kala Bazaar, 1960) and Raj Khosla (Kala Pani, 1958). Dev Anand also acted in Guru Dutt’s Jaal (1952) and Raj Khosla’s CID (1956), both produced by Guru Dutt.
Apart from CID whose music was composed by O.P. Nayyar, the others are all by S.D. Burman and are some of the most loved songs in the history of Hindi film music. While Hemant Kumar sang what Yash Chopra called his favourite film songs, Sahir Ludhianvi’s ‘Yeh raat, yeh chandni’ in Jaal, songs picturised on Dev Anand were mostly sung by Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar.
Although Dev Anand’s songs were a hugely important part of his star persona, huge popularity and great legacy, he doesn’t have ‘a voice’ in the way that Raj Kapoor had Mukesh or Amitabh had Kishore Kumar but is closely associated with both Rafi and Kishore.
Again, I can’t choose between Rafi and Kishore. It would be absurd as they are so different. S.D. Burman also used them both for great songs. However, S.D. Burman said he thought Dev Anand and Kishore were a perfect match. In Anirudh Bhattacharjee and Parthiv Dhar’s recent book, Kishore Kumar: The Ultimate Biography, S.D. Burman is quoted as saying, ‘Kishore[‘s]…voice was born for the actor…When I composed for Dev, I categorically tried to induct Kishore. Given his impulsive nature…[he] would not be available for days together. I used to resort to Rafi’s voice.’ (p. 321-2).
Dev Anand and Kishore also had a great rapport and much mutual admiration. It is said that it was so great after Baazi, that Kishore had a picture of Dev Anand on his wall (p. 165). Dev Anand said that he would pay Kishore as much as he received for a film as he found that Kishore could get his style just right (p.189).
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Dev Anand, S.D. Burman and Kishore worked together on over 100 songs. Kishore sang many more songs for Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan but they were usually with R.D. Burman. I suggest that the romantic persona of Dev Anand was the source of the middle class romantic hero that Rajesh Khanna took in the late 1960s, another non-dancing hero with much imitated facial expressions and a sense of style.
It was this period of Dev Anand’s work that I liked most. Although I watched Joshila (1973) when I was working on Yash Chopra, it is not memorable. Dev Anand’s directorial film, Prem Pujari (1970) had some massive hits by S.D. Burman sung by Kishore: ’Shokhiyon mein ghola‘ and ‘Phoolon ke rang se’. The last Dev Anand film I saw was the hippy classic, Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971).
Above all I think of Dev Anand from the 1950s and 1960s, when he gave great performances in outstanding films with memorable songs by S.D. Burman, sung by Kishore Kumar. This is how I will always remember and cherish him.
Happy Birthday, Dev Saab. Stay forever young.
Rachel Dwyer is professor emerita of Indian culture and cinema at SOAS, University of London.