Celebrated film-maker B.R. Chopra dead
Tribune News Service

Mumbai, November 5
Veteran film-maker B.R. Chopra passed away this morning after a short illness at his residence in suburban Juhu. He was 94.

Chopra is survived by his son Ravi, a film maker, two daughters and grandchildren. Baldev Raj Chopra born in Ludhiana, Punjab, in 1914, the veteran film maker began his career as a film journalist in Lahore before trying his hand in film production in the late 1940s. His first venture in Lahore was left incomplete due to partition.

After moving to New Delhi in 1947, Chopra again produced another film two years later, Karwat, which bombed at the box office. Undaunted, Chopra produced Afsana in 1951, which also saw his debut as a director. The Ashok Kumar-starrer went on to celebrate its silver jubilee and thus established Chopra’s career in Bollywood. BR Films, the banner founded by Chopra, went on to make a series of hits through the 1950s till the 1970s.

Many of his notable films carried a social message as was the norm in the heady years that followed India’s Independence. In all, Chopra directed 18 movies and produced 28 of them in a career spanning nearly five decades. His notable productions include Naya Daur, Afsana, Sadhana, Dhool ka Phool Kanoon, Gumrah, Waqt, Humraaz, etc. The latter-day productions under the B R Films banner included the gritty Insaaf Ka Taraazu in the 1980s and more recently Baghbaan, which deals with the plight of the elderly.

Chopra was among the first mainstream film makers to embrace television with the epic Mahabharat in the 1980s, which had a record viewer ship of nearly 90 per cent.

Apart from the Filmfare award for Naya Daur in 1951, he was conferred the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1998.

Meanwhile,Thespian Dilip Kumar has said all films of Chopra reflect the refinement that his academic background gave him. He described him as a friend and recalled “Chopra Saheb was engagingly witty at times and was full of quotes and anecdotes about great political and literary personalities”.