He played an important part in Amitabh's success 
By Screen Weekly, February 12, 2007 - 03:58 IST
By his use of highly stylized mannerisms, unusual getups, realistic make-up and different accents, Pran succeeded in rising above the ordinary, in turning stereotypes into unforgettable characters. Reproduced below are the extracts from the Biography of Pran (...and PRAN) by Bunny Reuben
Manoj Kumar’s Upkar was certainly the turning point in Pran’s career. But what was it that made Pran start thinking about doing ‘good men’s’ roles.’
‘Before this film I had been cast as the “bad man” in film after film, says Pran. ‘I remember that whenever I was spotted in public, or on the roads, I would be greeted with taunts like “Arrey badmash” “Hey lafanga,” (or) “O goonde harami” (all highly derogatory expletives). But I would shrug off these jeers nonchalantly! They also left my wife Shukla unperturbed, because she always knew that I was only doing a job and doing it well.
‘But one day my daughter Pinky, asked me quietly: “Daddy, why don’t you do some decent roles for a change?” ‘I realized immediately that her school friends had been talking to her about her Daddy. ‘Those days, whenever I came on screen, kids would hide their faces in their mothers’ laps and keep enquiring: “Mummy, gaya kya woh? Can we open our eyes now?”
‘There was one particular film, Kab, Kyon Aur Kahan, in which I play a man who returns from the dead, his pupils dilating horribly. I gave the little ones (and some of their parents too) the jitters,’ Pran recalls.
But despite the shivers he sent down many spines, Pran loved playing the villain. How then could he convince his daughter Pinky?
After much thought he called her to his side and asked: “Tell me… at the end of eighteen reels when bad men like me have been killed and the hero and the heroine are about to walk away into the sunset, what do you do?
Pat came Pinky’s answer: ‘Return home! The movie is over!’ ‘So you see, you’re only interested in the film till I’m around. Once I make my exit – you make yours too!’ he reminded her, and that, on a lighter note, ended the argument of his playing the hero!
How did Pran come to be part of the cast of Upkar? Elaborating on how he came close to Pran, Manoj Kumar recounted: ‘My friendship with him started with Do Badan and Shaheed.’ ‘Until then, I hadn’t had much of a chance to work with Pran Saab I had started as a junior artiste. I used to do two or four scenes in a film and very gradually went on to become a hero. Side by side, I developed another skill, Raj Khosla Saab was the director of Woh Kaun Thi. He had made me write a lot of the scenes for that film… Then Raj Khosla Saab was chosen to direct a film called Do Badan. He must have liked what I did before, because he made me write scenes for this film too.’
‘I used to notice Pran Saab looking at me with a peculiar expression. He may have been thinking: “Is kal ke chhokre koh toh dekho!” He had hardly started acting and now he is presuming to write!” But after working together for three-four days, it appeared that he liked the scenes I had written. Soon he and I became more friendly with each other, revealed Manoj.
Another factor contributed to the closeness that was developing between the older man and his younger contemporary: “Pran Saab was an expert in Urdu and English but at the time he wasn’t very accustomed to Hindi,’ divulged Manoj. ‘In one scene, there was a dialogue which had the words puschataap. Being more comfortable with the Urdu language, he naturally found these words quite hard to pronounce. So he requested: “Would you please change these words to Urdu, Panditjee?”’
Interestingly, since then Pran has always called Manoj, ‘Panditjee’!‘Anyway,’ Manoj continued, ‘I said to him, “Pran Saab, the language is such that the Urdu words for these words would be very difficult.” Pran said, “But I am not able to pronounce these.” So I said, “You just do the lip movement for these words and we’ll handle it in the dubbing.” Then Pran Saab remarked, “Nowadays, the wind of Hindi is blowing too hard and there are certain words I find really tough.” Since I could also write Urdu, he requested me to write out those words for him in Urdu. And from that time on we have shared a rapport. Speaking further, Manoj declared: ‘There is no producer who had not repeated Pran Saab in his productions,’ Manoj declared, ‘I have spent some forty-five to forty-seven years in this film industry, and Pran Saab has been there to share the joys and sorrows of everybody. He has always thought of this industry as a family. There is no producer who can say that he could not shoot because Pran Saab gave some trouble, or that Pran Saab cancelled the dates of the old films because he got a new film.’
‘Once we were shooting a fight sequence for Upkar… which he did on crutches. After two or three days, I noticed that something was different about Pran Saab. Since the sequence was so strenuous, I thought he was probably tired. He would do a shot and then sit in the corner or have a cigarette. Upon asking him whether anything was wrong, he would say, “no”.
‘We shared the same make-up room. That night after pack-up at 10.30 or so, I found that he was a bit silent, not the usual jolly person. I put my hand on his shoulder and asked him if he was tired? I could feel his body trembling and he made a sound as if he had hiccuped, then he said: “Yesterday, at eleven in the night, I went home after pack-up. After a bath, as I was about to eat, I got a trunk call from Calcutta informing me that my sister had died.” It was but natural that he could not have slept after he got that call. But what was amazing is that the next morning at seven sharp, he was on my sets!
‘And he never told me a thing about his bereavement that entire day! I said to him: “If you had told me this earlier, I could have cancelled the shooting and you could have gone to Calcutta.” He said: “I thought, I know you can cancel the shooting, but today is my outdoor shooting and there are a lot of combinations with other artistes also in this shooting, and if I had mentioned this news to you, then not only you, but seven other producers too would have had to suffer. Sab ka beda gark ho jata. Sister toh meri mari hai, main un producers ki maa ko kyun maarta?”Manoj paused in his narration, deeply impressed not just by Pran, the actor, but by Pran, the human being as well, and then said: “this is Pran Saab.’
‘People say that I gave him that role in Upkar, but I did not do anything extraordinary. I always used to think, “if a good man can do the acting of a villain, why can’t he do the acting of a good man?”Why ever not, indeed?
The Date: 11 May 1973. The time of reckoning had arrived. Zanjeer was being released. The first-day-first-show’s audience reaction would tell Prakash Mehra and the Zanjeer team whether or not all the hard work, sweat and toil had been judged worthy, and whether or not the film would run...
Three hours later, the verdict was out. The resounding applause said it all. Zanjeer was a hit, and with it, its star performers were a hit too!
Prakash Mehra remembers what happened in Calcutta. He and Amitabh Bachchan along with the unit of Zanjeer had arrived in that city for the premiere, but were not accompanied by Pran. The audience was visibly annoyed. “Where’s our hero?” they demanded to Prakash Mehra. However, after seeing the film never again did the audiences ask: “Where is our hero?”
A few weeks later, at the charity premiere of Zanjeer in New Delhi, the whole hall of Vigyan Bhavan reverberated with the sound of applause the moment Pran set foot on stage. Standing quietly till the ovation died down, Pran then addressed the audience:
“Thank you very much for your claps; your love has now bound me with a Zanjeer (a chain). But this is such a loving Zanjeer that I wish to be bound by it forever. Today with the Zanjeer of your love, we are going to present you another Zanjeer - that is of Prakash Mehra.”
‘This Zanjeer that has bound me to you people... has also bound two people forever - they are Amitjee and Jayajee. I could not attend their marriage and here I am meeting them for the first time since their marriage. Maybe you all are also seeing them for the first time after their marriage. So I am congratulating them on behalf of you all and from my side, I am blessing them.”
Yes, with the success of Zanjeer. Amitabh and Jaya who had been seeing each other for some time, decided that marriage could no longer be put on hold, and had tied the knot in a private ceremony on 3 June, 1973.
In spite of a ’poor’ review in a monthly magazine, Zanjeer was so successful that it went on to complete not just a silver jubilee, but a golden jubilee too!
Amitabh Bachchan, the ‘angry young man’ had arrived, and how! That Pran had played an important part in Amitabh’s success is something that the latter always acknowledges.
Zanjeer is an example of a film made primarily on the strength of the character actor’s name, along with factors such as the choice of heroine, the story, the tight script and an audience readied by the then-prevailing times to accept a new tough and angry hero with a purpose. All these inputs contributed to Zanjeer’s stupendous success.
So successful was the film that it was heartily appreciated even by international audiences! Pran, as part of a cultural delegation visiting the erstwhile Soviet Union to participate in the Thirtieth Anniversary celebrations of Indian independence, was mobbed in one of Moscow’s largest theatres where Zanjeer was screened as the opening attraction of a week-long festival of Indian films.
After Zanjeer, Pran and Amitabh made a successful team and worked in as many as fourteen more films together. When Amitabh was asked which film he did with Pran did he consider the most memorable and why, he replied.
‘I would say that there are so many, [it’s] very difficult to pick any one. Quite obviously Zanjeer is one because it was my first experience with him, I found him quite phenomenal in the film. Pran Saab was really the true thespian, the true veteran. He played that role immaculately. So I would rate Zanjeer as my most memorable film with him.’
Today, Zanjeer is remembered as much for its ‘angry young man’ as for its famous qawwali: ‘Yaari hai imaan mera, yaar meri zindagi.’
Screen India
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