Kishore Kumar
Though Kishore Kumar is best known as one of Hindi cinema’s most popular singers, the legendary artiste wore many hats including those of an actor, lyricist, scriptwriter and filmmaker.
A young Kishore followed his elder brother and actor Ashok Kumar to Mumbai in the early 1940s, and began to receive offers for playback singing even though he had no formal training in singing. Kishore Kumar also started acting in a few films featuring his brother, but was not interested in being an actor since his passion lay in singing. It was SD Burman who believe in Kishore’s talent as a singer and promoted him, using him as the voice for Dev Anand.
He also acted in a few popular films during the 50s and 60s including ‘Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi’, ‘Half Ticket’ and ‘Padosan’.Kishore Kumar’s popularity as a singer reached new heights with the release of ‘Aradhana’, in which he sang for Rajesh Khanna and won his first Filmfare award for Best Playback Singer (Male). During the Emergency in 1975, Kishore Kumar reportedly refused to sing for a Congress party rally in Mumbai and as a result there was an unofficial ban on playing any Kishore Kumar song on All India Radio till the end of Emergency.
In his personal life, Kishore Kumar married four times and stories and anecdotes about the singer’s eccentric behaviour only added to the aura of unpredictability around him. Even decades after his untimely death at the age of 58 in 1987, the versatile Kishore Kumar continues to be arguably India’s most popular playback singer ever.