Dilip Kumar Won Eight Filmfare Best Actor Awards, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award and the Padma Vibhushan, in a Screen Career That Began With Jwar Bhata in 1944

Filmfare’s list of winners opens in 1954, and its first Best Actor entry is Dilip Kumar for Daag. By Filmfare’s count he went on to win the category eight times, the last for Shakti. The Padma Bhushan notification of 26 January 1991 lists him under film acting, the Phalke Award followed for 1994, and the President’s Secretariat notification of 8 April 2015 places him on the Padma Vibhushan list beside Amitabh Bachchan, whose own career is covered in Amitabh Bachchan: six decades in cinema.

From a Peshawar fruit trader’s son to Bombay Talkies

Cinemaazi, the archive of the Indian Cinema Heritage Foundation, gives his birth name as Mohammed Yusuf Khan, his birth date as 11 December 1922 and his birthplace as Peshawar, now in Pakistan. Open magazine writes that the family moved in the 1930s from Peshawar’s Qissa Khawani Bazaar, through Calcutta, to Nagdevi Street near Crawford Market in Bombay, and that his father sold fruit. His childhood friend Raj Kapoor was also from Peshawar, according to the same article. Kapoor’s own career is told in Raj Kapoor, Awaara and the Soviet audience.

Open says Devika Rani of Bombay Talkies noticed him in Nainital, where he was looking for work, and hired him at Rs 500 a month, with a raise of Rs 200 a year. He had no acting training. Cinemaazi records his debut as Jwar Bhata (1944), opposite Mridula, and says he took the screen name Dilip Kumar at Bombay Talkies. Upperstall, the film-history site, names Jugnu (1947), opposite Noor Jehan, as his breakthrough.

Eight Best Actor awards, from Daag to Shakti

Filmfare’s own winners page lists Dilip Kumar as Best Actor for Daag (in its 1954 listing), Azaad (1956), Devdas (1957), Naya Daur (1958), Kohinoor (1961), Leader (1965), Ram Aur Shyam (1968) and Shakti (1983). The page labels each year by ceremony, so the years are not the release years of the films. In its 1958 listing, the same page names Mother India as best film, a title covered in Mother India and its Oscar nomination. Cinemaazi adds a Filmfare special award in 2005; Filmfare lists a lifetime achievement award for him as well, under its 1994 listing, while Cinemaazi dates that one to 1993.

Devdas (1955): the part that gave him the title

Devdas is based on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novella, dated 1917 by ThePrint. Bimal Roy produced and directed the 1955 Hindi version, with Dilip Kumar in the title role, Suchitra Sen as Paro and Vyjayanthimala as Chandramukhi. The University of Iowa’s Bollywood pages give its music as S. D. Burman’s, its lyrics as Sahir Ludhianvi’s and its running time as 161 minutes. Corey Creekmur, who wrote the Iowa essay, describes the three leads’ performances as restrained and convincing.

ThePrint’s Amit Upadhyaya credits Dilip Kumar’s performance with defining the character, and credits Nabendu Ghosh with the script and Rajinder Singh Bedi with the key dialogue. He says it is the only version of the story that gives an extended sequence to the lovers’ childhood. Dilip Kumar, in a letter read at a book launch and reported by ThePrint, said he wanted to convey the hopelessness that runs through Devdas’s relationships without pushing viewers into cynicism. Upperstall writes that he turned down Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa (1957) because he felt the role extended his Devdas.

Mughal-e-Azam (1960): the prince in an epic

K. Asif produced and directed Mughal-e-Azam, with Prithviraj Kapoor as Akbar, Dilip Kumar as Prince Salim and Madhubala as Anarkali, music by Naushad and lyrics by Shakeel Badayuni. The University of Iowa lists it at 198 minutes and notes that Asif kept costly colour for two musical scenes in the Palace of Mirrors. Eastern Eye gives the release date as 5 August 1960, with the premiere at the Maratha Mandir cinema in Mumbai, and a colour re-release on 12 November 2004. Filmfare’s list names it best film in its 1961 listing, the same listing in which Dilip Kumar won Best Actor for Kohinoor.

Sources differ on how long it took. Eastern Eye says Asif conceived it in 1944 and that it took 16 years; Cinemaazi says about 11 years of production; Iowa calls it purportedly a decade in the making. They differ on its box-office run too: Cinemaazi says it was the highest-grossing Indian film for eleven years, and Eastern Eye says until Sholay in 1975. Eastern Eye adds that Asif first rejected Dilip Kumar for Salim and that he reportedly filmed his part over six years.

Gunga Jumna (1961): the film he wrote and produced

The Iowa pages describe Gunga Jumna as scripted and produced by its star. Nitin Bose directed, Wajahat Mirza wrote the dialogue and Naushad composed the music. Dilip Kumar plays Gunga, who is framed for theft and joins a band of dacoits, while his real brother Nasir Khan plays Jumna, a police officer posted to their hometown. The Iowa page notes that Gunga and Dhanno speak Bhojpuri, a regional dialect of the Hindi belt, against Jumna’s measured Khari Boli. Cinemaazi says the film won the National Award for Second Best Feature Film in Hindi and that Kumar helped Vyjayanthimala with the accent. Open adds that he drew on the speech of a gardener in Deolali, near Nashik, where he went to school.

What “method” means in his case

The same preparation shows up elsewhere. Open reports that he took sitar lessons from Ustad Vilayat Khan for nearly a year for a song in Kohinoor. The Quint’s Ranjib Mazumder calls his approach naturalism, unusual for its era. Open also reports a 1982 Filmfare interview in which Kumar said that, after a run of tragic roles, drama coaches and psychiatrists in England advised him to try comedy, and that the change brought him great relief.

Whether that makes him India’s first method actor is argued, not settled. Javed Akhtar, in an Outlook tribute, says he was the first in the world, starting with Jwar Bhata, and notes that Marlon Brando came seven to eight years later in his career. Mazumder agrees Brando was younger but points out that Brando trained with Stella Adler, which Kumar did not. Upperstall’s reading is more guarded: it says his studied mannerisms, influenced by Paul Muni, sometimes made characters heavy-handed, as in Dil Diya Dard Liya.

The later years, Parliament and the honours

After Bairaag (1976) he took a break from acting, Cinemaazi says, and returned with Kranti in 1981. Cinemaazi’s filmography then runs through Shakti (1982), Karma (1986), Saudagar (1991) and Qila (1998), his last. Upperstall records that he was Sheriff of Bombay in 1980, a ceremonial honour. Cinemaazi lists him as a Rajya Sabha member from 2000 to 2006 and notes his autobiography, Dilip Kumar: The Substance and the Shadow, published in 2014.

The Phalke Award year is given as 1994, the 42nd award, by the Producers Guild of India and Cinemaazi; Upperstall says 1995. Cinemaazi dates the Pakistani civilian honour Nishan-e-Imtiaz to 1998. In July 1999 the Tribune reported that the Shiv Sena had threatened him with “dire consequences” unless he returned it. He went to Delhi and sought a meeting with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He told the paper the Prime Minister had approved his accepting the award in advance and had asked him to help build better relations with Pakistan, and that he would take recourse to law if the threats increased.

7 July 2021

Cinemaazi records that he died at Hinduja Hospital in Bombay on 7 July 2021, aged 98. That day the Prime Minister’s Office published Narendra Modi’s tweet, which said Dilip Kumar “will be remembered as a cinematic legend” and that his passing was a loss to the cultural world. Outlook reported that he was buried at Juhu Qabrastan in Santacruz with state honours, his body draped in the tricolour at his Pali Hill home and a ceremonial guard of honour at the cemetery.