Talat Mahmood- The Singer who sang for all the Major Stars of Bollywood

Talat Mahmood (24 February 1924 – 9 May 1998) is considered one of the greatest singers of Bollywood. He was particularly famous for singing soft and sombre semi-classical and non-classical ghazals, but the film songs sung by him are also considered critically flawless and outstanding. He can be described as the real founder of modern semi-classical and non-classical ghazal. 
Talat Mehmood was the real founder of modern semi-classical and non-classical ghazal. So, his influence upon other contemporary and succeeding ghazal singers has been broad and profound. It was he who paved the way for such legendary ghazal singers like Mehdi Hassan and Jagjit Singh. 
Besides being a gifted singer, Talar was quite handsome as well. He acted in over a dozen films with top actresses of the time like Nutan, Mala Sinha, Suraiya and others. He could be considered the Top Singing Star of Black & White Era. Later he decided to give up acting to concentrate on singing.
In this Blog I have selected the songs he sang for the Major Heroes of Bollywood

Song of Aarzoo (1949)

Song of Baabul (1950)

Song of Madhosh (1951)

Song of Anhonee (1952)

Song of Patita 1953

Song of Thokar(1953)

Song of  Taxi Driver (1954)

Song of Mirza Ghalib (1954)

Song of Baradari (1955)

Song of Dekh Kabira Roya (1957)

Song of  Sujata (1959)

Song of Chhaya 1961

Gems of Kishore Kumar under Laxmikant Pyarelal

Kishore Kumar,s Second Inning started with Aradhana in 1969 but before that, he gave great songs under Laxmikant Pyarelal. They had a great rapport with Kishore Kumar. Kishore Kumar sang the most songs (402) for L-P among all male singers, followed by Rafi (about 365 songs). First time Kishore sang for them was in Mr X in Bombay(1964), all the songs were hit. The next film Kishore did for L P was
HUM SAB USTAD HAI(1965).In this Blog I am taking some of the great songs by Kishore Kumar under the composition of L P
Laxmikant Pyarelal worked as assistants of S.D Burman and Kalyananji Anandji. Many say, Pyarelal, the son of trumpet player"Ramprasad Sharma" is best arranger and violinist of Zubin Mehta's calibre. They played in the orchestra of Husnalal Bhagatram first commercially successful duo of Bollywood.  However, I must mention that the duo has given some really extraordinary compositions for Kishore which even excel "Dada Burman" and Shankar Jaikishan scores.

Pyarelal Ji speaking about Kishore Kumar

                                                Mere Mehboob kayamat hogi

Song from Mr X in Bombay 1964

Ajanabee tum jane pahchane

Song from Hum Sab Ustad Hain 1965

                       Sultana Sultana Tu Na Ghabrana

Song from Shriman Fantoosh 1965

Khijan ke phhol pe aati kabhi bahar nahi

Song from Do Raste 1969

Accha To Hum Chalate Hai

Song from Aan Milo Sajna 1970

Waada Tera Waada

Song from Dushman 1971

Yah jeevan Hai

Song from Piya Ka Ghar 1972

Mere Dilme Aaj Kya Hai

Song from Daag 1973

Ruk Jana Nahi

Song from Imtihaan 1974

Gadi Bula Rahi Hai

Song from Dost 1974

Aate Jate Khoobsurat Awara

Song from Anurodh 1977

Om Shanti Om

Song from Karz 1980

zindagi ki yahi reet hai

Song from Mr India 1987

Nutan.- An Actress Who Could Change Gear to Play any Character.

After Meena Kumari, it is Nutan who could be called Emotional Queen. She was the five-time winner of Filmfare Award of Best Actress. She played the Gauri of Seema, Sujata of Sujata, Kalyani of Bandhini or Romantic role in Tere Ghar Ke Samne, she performed all at ease and perfectly.
She was an actress who could change gears with well-oiled efficiency: She was the very essence of featherweight froth in films like Paying Guest and Anadi and made a splash by posing in a swimsuit for Delhi Ka Thug. Nutan also gave cry-from-the-soul performances in Sone Ki Chidiya (as an exploited actress) She acted in Shammi Kapoor extavaganzas like Laat Sahab clad in skirts and pants, sari-clad, self-sacrificing Saraswatichandra mould, secretly wiping away a tear and singing Main toh bhool chali babul ka desh. This hit garba song was one of Nutan's few, full-fledged dance numbers.
 Nutan continued to get interesting roles even after she crossed 40. She could portray strength of character --- as seen in her award-winning role in Raj Khosla's Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki and others like Saajan Bina Suhagan, Saajan Ki Saheli, Teri Maang Sitaron Se Bhar Doon, Rishta Kagaz Ka.

Filmmaker Subhash Ghai cast her in a pivotal role in his Meri Jung and then fulfilled the wishes of several filmgoers (even if it was a little late in the day) by finally casting Dilip Kumar and Nutan together in his Karma (1986).

Nutan was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer in 1990.^] In February 1991, she was admitted to Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai after she fell ill. At the time, she was filming Garajna and Insaniyat. She died at 12:07 p.m. (IST) on 21 February.

Nutan's Landmark Films
Year	Film	Hero	Director
1950	Hamari Beti	Shekhar	Shobhana Samarth
1951	Nagina	Nasir Khan	Ravindra Dave
1951	Hum Log	Sajjan	Zia Sarhady
1955	Seema	Balraj Sahni	Amiya Chakravorthy
1957	Paying Guest	Dev Anand	Subodh Mukherji
1958	Delhi Ka Thug	Kishore Kumar	S D Narang
1959	Anadi	Raj Kapoor	Hrishikesh Mukherji
1959	Sujata	Sunil Dutt	Bimal Roy
1960	Chhaliya	Raj Kapoor	Manmohan Desai
1963	Bandini	Ashok Kumar, Dharmendra	Bimal Roy
1963	Tere Ghar Ke Saamne	Dev Anand	Vijay Anand
1965	Khandaan	Sunil Dutt	A Bhim Singh
1967	Milan	Sunil Dutt	Subba Rao
1968	Saraswatichandra	Manish	Govind Saraiya
1972	Anuraag	--	Shakti Samanta
1973	Saudagar	Amitabh Bachchan	Sudhendu Roy
1978	Main Tulsi Tere Angan Ki	Vijay Anand	Raj Khosla
1978	Saajan Bina Suhagan	--	Sawan Kumar Tak
1985	Meri Jung	--	Subhash Ghai
1986	Karma	Dilip Kumar	Subhash Ghai

Songs of Nutan

Song of Sujata

Song of Paying Guest

Song of Anari

Song of Tere Ghar Ke Samne

Song of Bandhini

Song of Saraswatichandra

Song of Milan

Song of Saudagar

Khayyam-A Composer who gave many immortal Songs

God has made Khayyam Saheb Special. He has given this Industry many Immortal Songs. He was born on 18th Feb 1927 as Sa'aadat Hussain in undivided Punjab. He made his debut as Sharmaji of the Sharmaji-Varmaji composer duo with the movie Heer Ranjha in 1948. He went solo after his co-composer Rahman Varma went to the newly created Pakistan post-partition. One of his earliest breaks was in the film Biwi in which the song "Akele mein wo ghabrate to Honge" sung by Mohammed Rafi was a huge hit. But he gained greater recognition from the film Phir Subha Hogi starring Raj Kapoor and Mala Sinha, in which songs written by Sahir Ludhyanvi and sung by Mukesh and Asha Bhonsle were set to tune by Khayyam, notable amongst them "Wo Subha Kabhi to Aayegi", "Aasman Pe hai Khauda aur Zameen pe Hum" and "Chin-o-Arab Humara".

The song "Jaane kya dhhonti rehti hein ye aanken mujhmen" sung by Rafi from the film Shola Aur Shabnam established Khayyam's reputation as a great composer. Latter on Songs from the film Shagun which had Khayyam's wife Jagjit Kaur sing "Tum apna ranj-o-gham" and "Tum chali Jaogi". From the film Lala Rukh "Hai Kali Kali ke lab par" sung by Rafi and from Footpath "Shyam-e-Gham ki Kasam" sung by Talat Mehmood. From Mohhabat Isko Kehte Hein "Theheriye hosh mein aa lun to chaley jaiyega" by Rafi and Suman Kalyanpur made him a popular composer.
Khayyam teamed up with Sahir Ludhyanvi once again to work in the Yash Chopra-directed "Kabhi Kabhi". The songs were super hits and showed Khayyam's versatility with huge hits like "Kabhi Kabhi mere dil mein Khayal ata hai" (Sung by Mukesh), "Tere chehre se nazar Nahin hatti" (Kishore & Lata) and "Mein Pal do pal ka Shayar Hun" (Mukesh). 
 Again pairing with Sahir in Trishul he produced great songs like "Mohabbat bare kaam ki cheez hai" and "Janeman tum kamal karti ho" and the light "Gapuchi Gapuchi gam gam". "Hazar rahen" from Thodi si Bewafai and "Aaja re o mere dilbar Aaja" from Noorie and "Dikahyi Diye" from Bazaar are some noticeable songs. Khayyam also created music for the Kamal Amrohi directed "Razia Sultan" and his "Aye dil-e-nadan" sung by Lata capturing the mood beautifully. One of popular song is Cho lene do.

How can we forget him in Muzaffar Ali's Umrao Jaan in 1981. He made Asha Bhonsle sing songs which are indisputably her best. "In Aankhon ki masti ke", "Ye Kya Jagah hai doston" and "Dil Cheez kya hai" are evergreen.

Khayyam also made several non-film albums in various styles – ghazals, bhajans, geet, Shabd – that amounted to over 200 titles. “Some of them were so popular that I was pleasantly surprised to notice that a few music directors had copied parts of their tunes and musical phrases and used them in their film songs,” he said. “They may not give me the credit, but they know that God has made Khayyam special.”

Song of Footpath 1953

Song of Phir Subha Hogi (1958)

Song of Shola Aur Shabnam (1961)

Song of  Shagoon (1964

Song of Aakhri Khat (1966)

Song of Kabhi Kabhie (1976)

Song of Thodi Si Bewafaai (1980)

Song of Umrao Jaan 1981

Song of Umrao Jaan 1981

Song of Bazaar (1982)

Song of Razia Sultan (1983)

Navketan's Guide- From Pages to Celluloid

After the Berlin Film Festival in 1962, Dev Anand and his wife travelled to London and later, at the invitation of the Nobel laureate, Pearl S Buck and the Polish-American TV film director, Tad Danielewski of Stratton Productions, to New York. It was while eating a dish called ‘Scorpion’ at a restaurant in ‘The Village’ (as Greenwich Village is commonly referred to), that Dev Anand presented Pearl S Buck with a copy of R K Narayan’s The Guide. He told them that he intends to make a film on this book.
Pearl and Tad were impressed by the possibilities of a cinematic adaptation of the novel, they had doubts about whether Narayan would be willing to part with the film rights of his novel.
R K Narayan was an Indian writer known for his works set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. He was a leading author of early Indian literature in English along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao. Narayan’s The Financial Expert was hailed as one of the most original works of 1951 and Sahitya Akademi Award winner The Guide was adapted for film. His first book "Swami and Friends" was published in 1935. Narayan's next novel The Bachelor of Arts (1937), was inspired in part by his experiences at college, and dealt with the theme of a rebellious adolescent transitioning to a rather well-adjusted adult; He wrote nearly three dozen novels and several short-story collections, The Guide was his thirteenth book and eighth novel. It was published in 1958.
Dev Anand in his Biography says “I read it at one go…I thought it had a good story, and the character of Raju, the guide, was extraordinary,”He first wrote a letter to R K Narayan, As per Narayan he got a letter from Anand, modestly describing himself as “a producer and actor from Bombay” and wondering, “I don’t know if my name is familiar to you.” In this letter, he wrote about his interest in making a great film on The Guide. 

After his approval, Dev immediately sought an appointment with R. K. Narayan and signed a contract with him. There was also a broad consensus that the film is made in both English and Hindi. While Tad was de facto director of the English version, for the Hindi, it was a toss-up between Chetan Anand and Raj Khosla. Neither worked out. Finally, Vijay ‘Goldie’ Anand was chosen to direct the Hindi version.

Guide(Eng)-Pic-1.

Guide(Eng)-Pic-2

Dev Anand wanted to start English version and Hindi version simultaneously. The idea was to film the scenes common to both versions simultaneously, a Hindi shot to be immediately followed by the same shot in English, to save time and money but it could not be materialised because Vijay Anand was not happy with the script, he wanted to change the script and write a new script. The other reason for the delay of the Hindi version was the music composer S.D. Burman had suffered a heart attack and was not available for the music. Burman Dada advised Dev to sign on a new composer for Guide, but Dev put his foot down and insisted that Burman should first get well and then take over.
As we all know that in the novel the city taken by the author was an imaginary town Malgudi but in the film, Udaipur of Rajasthan was prefered by the director Tad. But it wasn’t only the locations, the scale and the general tenor that shifted from page to screen. It was the characters themselves.  This annoyed R K Narayan but he was later convinced that Tad could not create the town similar to Malgudi. The next change was the name of the hero as Raju Guide whereas in the novel it was Railway Raju. Raju’s childhood and youth don’t appear in the film. Part of the reason lay in popular cinema’s need to be larger than life. All the small town specificity of Malgudi was erased. The film also has many sequences specifically inserted to impress the foreign audience as some kind of Bharat-Darshan.

Similarly, the Rosie who made it to the Hindi film screen was nowhere near as radical as the original Rosie – the Rosie created by RK Narayan, in his novel The Guide.
Narayan’s character had chutzpah, but he had his awkward moments. But the film was a star vehicle for Dev Anand, and its hero had to be more Dev Anand than Raju. So Anand’s Raju Guide has no self-doubt. He is never worried about the hairiness of his chest. He never wonders if he could be bold enough to woo Rosie. It is in relation to Rosie that he is most transformed – because Rosie herself has changed. Narayan’s Rosie is no sophisticated, but her ambition is never in doubt. Nor is the carnality of Raju’s interest in her, or her reciprocation of it. The novel has none of the high-mindedness that Hindi cinema forced upon its heroes and heroines so Raju can tell us the truth: he is attracted to Rosie; his support of her dance begins because it is the clue to her affections.

The novel’s Rosie is full of plans; Raju need only support them. But Vijay Anand’s film, keenly aware of his conservative audience, turns his Rosie into a bundle of nerves who tries three times to commit suicide, only to be saved each time by Raju, and berated: “Tumhari haalat aaj yeh isliye hai ki tumne apni haalat se baghaavat karna nahi seekha.”
The other sociological element that makes both book and film fascinating is that Rosie is a devadasi by birth, and her reclaiming of dance in a new secular public form formed a fictional counterpart to the actual national reclaiming of Bharatnatyam. Here, too, the film has Marco insult dance, while Raju delivers a lecture on how artists are no longer bhaands.
By June 1963, the shooting of the English version of The Guide was completed and Pearl S. Buck who viewed the rushes found it up to the mark. When Narayan saw the English version in January 1964, he wrote to Dev, labelling the film profound, artistic, and exquisite. In 1964, Dev began promoting The Guide in the US and the premiere elicited encouraging responses from a cross-section of viewers.
The English version premiered at the Lincoln Art theatre in New York in February 1965. The mainstream press in America including The New York Times and the Time magazine didn’t take a liking to The Guide.
The English Guide was a flop but Dev Anand was not bothered, he took the failure in his stride. “The film did not fare well, but it gave me a semblance of recognition in a new arena… The new experience was rewarding enough,” he writes in Romancing with Life. 
Dev Anand had plans to release the Hindi version of The Guide by end 1965. But suddenly, he was faced with a barrage of protests from some quarters who strongly recommended that the film would be banned on grounds that it promoted infidelity, that too of a woman.
Finally, Guide released on 8 April 1966. It had a shaky start, for here was a film which didn’t present Dev Anand as the quintessential lover boy. Initially, the response was lukewarm but the film picked up after a few days when all the critics gave good reviews and also the music of the film became hit.

 Narayan didn’t care for either of the movies, especially the depiction of Rosie as an all-around dancer rather than a Bharatanatyam exponent. Probably referring to the Hindi version, Narayan writes, it “converted my heroine’s performances into an extravaganza with delicious fruity colours and costumes”.

Song of Guide 1965

Song of Guide 1965

Song of Guide 1965

Song of Guide 1965

Song of Guide 1965

Song of Guide 1965

Song of Guide 1965

Song of Guide 1965

Scene from Guide 1965

I S Johar - A Versatile Bollywood Personality

I S Johar(16Feb 1920- 10 March 1984) was an enigmatic, unique and idiosyncratic individual. He was a well-known Indian actor, writer, producer and director of his time. He was famous for putting his name in the title of his movies; like in movies Mera Naam Johar, Johar in Kashmir, Johar in Bombay,Johar Mehmood in Goa and Johar Mehmood in Hong Kong. He also worked in a few top Hollywood films like Laurance Of Arabia, HARRY BLACK AND THE TIGER, Death on Nile (1978),
The noted Indian film director Yash Chopra started his film career as an assistant director under I. S. Johar. He will also be remembered for his triple role in Johny Mera Naam.

He was born on 16 February 1920, in Talagang (Now in Pakistan), British India. He completed MA degree in Economics and Politics before completing his LLB. In 1947, during the Partition crisis, Johar was visiting Patiala with his family for a wedding, when riots broke out back home in Lahore. He could never go back, and thereafter he worked in Jalandhar for a while, and his family remained in Delhi before he eventually moved to Bombay, where he made his acting debut with Roop K Shorey's, Ek Thi Ladki (1949).
He also wrote and directed films, including the partition-based Hindi movie Nastik (1954), Johar Mehmood in Goa and Johar Mehmood in Hong Kong, in which he co-starred with comedian Mehmood.
In 1963 he starred as "Gopal" in two Italian films directed by Mario Camerini: Kali Yug, la dea della vendetta (Kali Yug, Goddess of vengeance) and Il Mistero del tempio indiano (The secret of the Hindu temple).His film Nasbandi (Vasectomy) was a spoof on Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's failed policy of population control by coerced vasectomies during the period of Emergency and was "banned" when it was first released. 
He also made a film Joi Bangla Desh immediately after the formation of Bangla Desh. After that, he made 5 Rifles in 1974 in which he took 5 duplicate actors of popular actors such as Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna and Shashi Kapoor.

Gasim in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA 

He was a comedian of a different style, some of his significant films are Hum Sab Chor Hain (1956), Goonj Uthi Shehnai (1959),  Bewaqoof (1960), April Fool (1964), Shagird (1967), Aaj Ki Taaza Khabar (1973)and Banarsi Babu 1973.
He got Filmfare Best Comedian Award for his Triple roles in Johny Mera Naam.
He died in Bombay, on 10 March 1984

Song of Johar Mehmood in Goa

Song of Johar Mehmood in Goa

Song of Shagird

Song of Johar Mehmood in Kashmir

Song of Nasbandi