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Born in Sialkot (now in Pakistan) on July 20, 1927, Rajendra Kumar belonged to the generation which learnt acting by trial and error. After the 1947 Partition, the young Rajendra walked with his family, several miles to India and arrived in Bombay with a letter of introduction to lyricist Rajendra Kishen. His struggle was very hard as he did odd jobs, took whatever little work came his way and was even roofless for some time. The story of his rise to become 'The richest man
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in the industry', as he was once called, is fascinating. The drama can be seen if we note the two roles he played on the sets of film maker H S Rawail over the years. Once he was an assistant director and in Hindi film, that often meant an errand boy, specially when film makers keep a dozen assistants.
He began his career by working as an extra in films like 'Mela' in 1948. After a long struggle for seven years, his first major role came with 'Vachan' in 1955, where he played Geeta Bali's brother. In 1957, he played a small role of the good son in 'Mother India'. However it was 'Gunj Uthi Shehnai' in 1959 that established him as an actor and he catapulted to success with films that followed, like 'Dil Ek Mandir', 'Mere Mehboob', 'Arzoo', 'Sarusal' and a restrained performance in Raj Kapoor's 'Sangam'.He was labelled 'The Romantic' as in most of his films, he is shown dying in the end. With several successful films in a span of seven years, he was known as the Jubilee star. With the advent of the new genre of films, Rajendra Kumar's career went through an all-time low with no hope of revival.
In 1981, he produced the super-hit film, Love Story that launched his son, Kumar Gaurav. Unfortunately none of the films that he produced after Love Story made their mark and relations were strained between father and son. Kumar Gaurav then shifted to his father-in-law Sunil Dutt's house.
"I will still star my son in whichever film I produce," he maintained.
Rajendra Kumar himself moved over to play character roles and even acted in TV serials. But this was not for want of money. The prudent Punjabi had all along invested his earnings wisely in blue chip shares, a dubbing theatre (named after his daughter Dimple) and had several other interests.
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