Nargis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the town in France, see Nargis, Loiret; For the 2008 cyclone which devastated the Irrawaddy Delta and the city of Yangon, see Cyclone Nargis
Nargis
Born Fatima Rashid
June 1, 1929
Calcutta, West Bengal, British India
Died May 3, 1981
Bombay, Maharashtra,India
Years active 1935, 1942–1967
Spouse(s) Sunil Dutt (1958–1981) (her death)

Nargis (Hindi: नर्गिस, Urdu: نرگس), June 1, 1929 – May 3, 1981, was an Indian actress best known for her role as Radha in the Oscar-nominated film Mother India. She was the wife of actor Sunil Dutt (who appeared in Mother India as her son) and her son Sanjay Dutt is currently a very successful actor in the industry.

Contents

[edit] Personal life

Nargis was born Fatima Rashid, the daughter of the Allahabad-based Muslim singer, Jaddanbai and a Hindu Mohyal father of Rawalpindi, named Uttamchand Mohanchand[1]. Nargis married the actor Sunil Dutt (himself a Mohyal from Jhelum, British India). Her brother Anwar Hussain was also an actor in the film industry. Nargis started her career in the 1930s as a child artist and progressed quickly to leading roles in several popular films in the 1940s and 1950s which remain popular today. In most of her films she appeared opposite the director and Bollywood star Raj Kapoor. She is said to have been his real-life love interest as well as his favorite heroine. The affair was doomed to remain an affair, however, as Kapoor made no move to divorce his wife.

It is a well-known story that while shooting for Mother India, Nargis was trapped amidst lit haystacks while filming a scene. As the flames got higher and higher, Sunil Dutt, who played her rebellious son Birju in the film, ran through the fire and rescued her. Later, Dutt proposed to her, and they married on March 11, 1958. The marriage produced three children: Sanjay, Namrata, and Priya. Sanjay Dutt went onto become a very successful film actor. Namrata went onto marry actor Kumar Gaurav, son of veteran actor Rajendra Kumar who had appeared alongside both Nargis and Sunil Dutt in Mother India. Priya became a politician.

[edit] Career

Fatima was recruited to the cinema at an early age. Fatima made her first film appearance in 1935, in Talashe Haq. The six-year-old was credited as "Baby Nargis". Nargis, her stage name, means "Narcissus", the flower. She was always credited as Nargis in all of her films.

Nargis appeared in numerous movies after her 1935 debut; she won lasting fame for her later, adult, roles. She starred in many popular Hindi-Urdu movies of the late 1940s and 1950s such as Barsaat (1949), Andaz (1949), Awaara (1951), Deedar (1951), Shree 420 (1955), and Chori Chori (1956). In most of her films she starred alongside Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar.

Her most famous role came in Mehboob Khan's Oscar-nominated rural drama Mother India in 1957. She won the Filmfare Best Actress Award for her performance. After her marriage to Sunil Dutt in 1958, Nargis gave up her film career after her last few film releases to settle down with her family. She made her last film appearance in the 1967 film Raat Aur Din for which she won a National Film Award for Best Actress, the first actress to win in this category. She also received a Filmfare Nomination as Best Actress for this film.

Nargis died of pancreatic cancer in 1981, only a few weeks before her son Sanjay Dutt's debut film Rocky was released.

[edit] Awards and recognitions

[edit] Filmography

[edit] References

  1. ^ Biography of Nargis at IMDB.
  2. ^ [1]
  3. ^ [2]
  4. ^ [3]
  5. ^ "Amitabh, Nargis 'best artistes'", The Tribune

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Cinema of India
Industries: Assamese • Bengal • Bollywood • Karnataka • Kollywood • Malayalam • Marathi • Punjwood •Tollywood