Guru Dutt

Born: July 9, 1925 in Mysore

Biography: Guru Dutt will always be known as the director who ushered in the Golden Age in Indian Hindi cinema. Born as Vasanth Kumar Shivshankar Padukone, he was later named as Guru Dutt. He did his schooling in Bhawanipore near Calcutta and then joined a performing arts troupe by Uday Shankar before the center had to be closed due to World War II.

Guru Dutt then worked as a telephone operator for a brief while in Calcutta before he started working with Prabhat Film Company in Pune. It is here that he forged friendships with future stars like Dev Anand and Rehman. In 1944, Dutt acted in a cameo role in Chand. He then worked as an assistant to director Vishram Bedekar. In 1946, he worked as an assistant director and choreographed songs for PL Santoshi’s film Hum Ek Hain. He also had a flair for writing and wrote short stories which were published in The Illustrated Weekly of India.

Dutt’s first big break came with his directorial debut film Baazi under friend Dev Anand’s company Navketan, which was a great success. He was credited for using close-up shots and songs as a narrative in films and emerged as a trendsetter for future filmmaking. His next films were Jaal and Baaz, and these were average performers. This was followed by a string of successful films like Aar Paar, Mr. and Mrs. 55, C.I.D. and Pyaasa.

Pyaasa was a blockbuster which described the life of a poet rejected by the world. This and his next film Kaagaz Ke Phool, though a flop, was later recognized as one of his best works and was regarded as one of the greatest films of all time by Time magazine. Later Dutt only continued producing and acting. His performances in Sahib, Bibi Aur Ghulam, Chaudhvin Ka Chand, Pyaasa et al have been outstanding.

But, despite his creative and commercial successes, Guru Dutt was affected by his marred personal life which eventually culminated into death caused by an accidental overdose of sleeping pills; whether accidental or suicidal remains a controversy!

AKA & Alternative Spellings: Guru Dut