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Few can forget the revulsion that Pran’s personification of wickedness evoked. The ace villain brought the baddie centrestage on celluloid and left an indelible impact with his masterly performances. Bunny Reuben celebrates the bad guy who beat the heroes.
‘IN Hollywood,’ began Manoj Kumar, in an interview exclusively done for this biography, ‘it is said that if you do not find an appropriate person for the role that is written, then take Anthony Quinn.’ He continued. ‘I would say that if you do not find an actor in Bollywood who can do the role that is written, then take Pran Saab — he is so versatile and dedicated.’ Yet consider this: Despite the fact that in some of his early films he had done sympathetic roles also, film makers unerringly continued to cast Pran in bad man’s roles. Manoj Kumar was one of the few exceptions who could discern in Pran the talent to do something more than what had been demanded of him, or even exploited, up to that point of time.
By the late 1950s or early 1960s, it had become apparent that Pran was getting restless and wanted to do something different — Shaheed was proof of that. But the question was: After years of playing ‘bad man’ and even ‘good bad man’, could he express the kind of emotions and feelings required in a character role? And more importantly, would audiences now accept Pran in a full-fledged ‘good man’s’ role? The time had come for Pran to present the people with an answer. 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 realised 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.... *** With the number of ‘bad man’ roles that Pran had done since Yamla Jat, he seemed to have gotten under the skin of negative characterisations. Also, the ‘good man’ roles coming his way were not that many. Interestingly, with regard to the effect playing bad man in all these films had on Pran, Firoze Rangoonwalla wrote in an article on him in Screen: ‘The only scar all this (playing bad man in film after film) left on Pran was an unconscious habit of narrowing one eye and enlarging the other. I still remember that even when he was playing lovey-dovey with his little heroine Sharda in Grahasti and singing a duet Tere naaz uthane ko jee chahta hai with her, the expressions on his face suggested that his intentions towards the lady were not exactly honourable! It is generally agreed that it was D.D. Kashyap’s Badi Bahen, which established Pran as the villain to watch out for. By the time Pran was signed for Badi Bahen, he had consciously begun to infuse into his roles that certain something, which would ensure that each character he played would turn out unlike any other. In Badi Bahen, Pran adopted a ‘trademark’ action. Remembering his role in the film, Pran revealed that he decided to use his ability to blow perfect smoke rings while smoking his cigarettes to establish the ‘style’ of the character. Pran recalls: ‘The director was so impressed with my smoke rings that at the point where I am supposed to come into the story, he changed the scene so that it would begin without actually showing me. He had me blow a perfect smoke ring and shot it wafting into the frame, hitting Geeta Bali and her being startled by it. Then the camera moved slowly to bring me in close-up, to introduce my character in the film.’ This was an utterly original way to create a palpable tension in the audience, an expectation, anticipating the entry of a key character — the story’s ‘bad’ factor. The unusual way in which the scene was picturised had the desired effect. The moment the audience saw the smoke rings they immediately knew that Pran was on the prowl. Badi Bahen was a box office superhit with fabulous songs composed by Husnlal Bhagatram that are remembered even to this day. It won the Best Picture Award at the very first Annual Veni Film Awards function. Excerpted from...and Pran, A Biography by Bunny Reuben, published by Harper Collins India |
Between Halaku (1956) and Upkar (1967),
Pran’s films gave ample proof of his historic range. They show an
actor who desired to break free of the mould in which film makers and
the audience had cast him: an actor, who not only desired to do
so, but was capable of doing so.
