Nasir Hussain created on-screen image of Dev and Shammi Kapoor – said Javed Akhtar
Nasir Hussain created on-screen image of Dev and Shammi Kapoor – said Javed Akhtar
It goes without saying that Dev Anand and Shammi Kapoor were born actors.
Both were stars of 1950s who were acknowledged for their distinct and unique style and persons which made them stand apart from the rest.
Javed Akhtar veteran screenwriter and lyricist recalled that filmmaker Nasir Hussain was the one who created this unique style for both Dev and Shammi. Javed was in conversation with actor Aamir Khan( Nasir Hussain’s nephew)
Nasir is acknowledged for directing films like Tumsa Nahin Dekha, Caravan, Yaadon Ki Baaraat, among others, and was also credited with highlighting Shammi’s unique qualities on screen, and was seen as the filmmaker who was responsible for making him star. Javed recalled that before working with Nasir, Shammi had a very different appearance, and his on-screen style wasn’t all that distinct. But, it all changed after he made Tumsa Nahin Dekha. “Shammi Kapoor used to have a moustache, a different hairstyle. He changed Shammi’s image in Tumsa Nahin Dekha. All of this youthfulness, films that have this bubbliness, elements that people are still trying to add in their films, it was invented by him. It did not exist before him,” he said.
Javed added that even Dev Anand’s on-screen image was created by Nasir Hussain. Nasir wrote two of Dev’s films – 1955’s Munimji and 1957’s Paying Guest. He later directed Dev in 1961’s Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai. Javed shared, “Dev Anand became Dev Anand after Nasir saab’s films Munimji, Paying Guest. This image of Dev Anand that we know… Dev Anand was a very vegetarian actor. There was a film that Dev Anand did, I am forgetting its name, it had two friends. One was a playboy and the other one was a Gandhian. The role of the playboy was done by Manmohan Krishna and Dev saab played the Gandhian,” he shared. This was the 1951 film Aaram. Before working with Nasir, Dev was already a superstar who had done films like Baazi, Jaal and Taxi Driver.
Talking about Nasir, Javed Akhtar called him “one of the most underrated or under-recognised producer-directors of the film industry.” Amidst his screenwriting days, Javed Akhtar, along with Salim Khan, worked with Nasir on Yaadon Ki Baaraat. This was one of the first hits of Salim-Javed as a writing duo. However, Nasir is credited as a co-writer in the film. Salim-Javed did not work with Nasir Hussain after this.
Nasir was reportedly upset with Salim-Javed for giving him a script that was quite similar to Zanjeer, but he did not realise it until both films were out. “It was too late when Nasir realised that Salim-Javed had palmed off the same basic plot to him.and Prakash Mehra. But characters and treatment were completely different, and so both Zanjeer and his film were major hits in the same year,” he said in an interview. posthumously, quoted in Diptakirti Chaudhuri’s book ‘Written by Salim-Javed’.
News Edit KV Raman
