Kishore
Kumar, who passed away on 13 October
1987, in Bombay [now Mumbai], aged 58,
was an Indian actor, playback singer, composer, and director known
for his comic roles in Indian films of the 1950s and for his expressive and versatile
singing voice, which, in the course of a career that spanned nearly four
decades, he lent to many of India’s top screen actors.
Kumar was the youngest child
of a Bengali professional family that had settled in west-central
India, in the present-day state of Madhya Pradesh. When he was a teenager,
he got a job in Bombay (now Mumbai) as an occasional chorus singer at the
Bombay Talkies film studio, where his elder brother Ashok Kumar was the
reigning star. Although his heart was in singing, the younger Kumar made his acting
debut in 1946 in the nondescript film Shikari. It was the
1951 release of Andolan, however, that propelled him
to stardom as a singer-actor and ultimately freed him from the shadow of his
brother Ashok.
In his early years of on-screen celebrity, Kumar appeared
principally in slapstick comedies, which revealed his flair both for humorous
roles and for singing. In Bimal Roy’s Naukri (1954) and in Hrishikesh
Mukherjee’s directorial debut, Musafir (1957), he played an unemployed young man
desperately seeking a job to support his family. Kumar reached his peak as a
comic actor with the film New Delhi (1956), in which he played a North Indian
Punjabi pretending to be a South Indian Tamil so that he would
be able rent a room in New Delhi, and in the self-produced film Chalti ka naam gaadi (1958; “That Which Runs Is a Car”), which
starred three brothers—Ashok Kumar, Anoop Kumar, and Kishore Kumar—in the roles
of three brothers whose lives are upended by two women who present a threat to
the brothers’ voIn the late 1940s Kishore Kumar collaborated with
the leading actor Dev
Anand by serving as his playback singer—the voice for his songs. For the next
two decades Kumar sang primarily for Anand, and the partnership between the
versatile crooner and the romantic film star created a musical gold mine
in films such as Munimji (1955), Funtoosh (1956), Nau
do gyarah (1957), and Jewel Thief (1967).
A new high point in Kumar’s career came in 1969: the film Aradhana catapulted Rajesh Khanna to
superstardom, and Kumar, who had lent his voice to Khanna, became the leading
playback singer of the Hindi film industry. Kumar retained that position until
he died.
Kumar’s rise to the top of
India’s pool of playback singers was an extraordinary feat. Unlike his
colleagues in the profession, most of whom were trained in Indian classical music,
Kumar had no formal music training whatsoever. Nevertheless, he was a skilled
imitator, interpreter, and innovator. He used colourful timbral effects—such as yodelling—in
his vocalizations, experimented with electric organs and other atypical instruments
in his accompaniments, and enlivened his performances with upbeat rhythms. All
those features ultimately imparted an appealing sense of modernity to Kumar’s
overall sound.
Aside from acting and singing, Kumar composed music for
Indian films. He also directed several productions, including Door
gagan ki chhaon mein (1964) and Door ka rahi (1971).
In contrast to the light-hearted films in which he typically participated as an
actor, singer, or composer, the films that Kumar directed were often tragedies.
