Shammi Kapoor

The on screen lives of most the 50s heroes was one long agony of self-repression till Shammi Kapoor struck like lightning with his brash, cocky swagger and his eagerness to rebuke convention.

His rebel yell, ‘Yahoo’ is not a word that will be found in any dictionary; but with this one word, Shammi Kapoor announced the transition of the Hindi film hero from yesterday’s loser, Devdas, to today’s Sikander, a winner.

The middle son of Prithviraj Kapoor and the younger brother of Raj Kapoor, Shammi’s entry into films in 1953 was not propitious though he worked with major heroines like Madhubala (Rail Ka Dibba), Suraiya (Shama Parwana) and Nalini Jaywant (Hum Sab Chor Hain). His first 18 films as a hero were marked by a single characteristic — they were all major flops. The long-haired, soulfully romantic image was obviously not working and being already married (to Geeta Bali) and a father, Shammi needed to find success fast. So, mixing Elvis Presley and James Dean in equal proportions, he had his hair cut in the famous ducktail style of the 50s and reinvented himself with Tumsa Nahin Dekha. “I was sitting with friends deciding on how best to present myself,” Shammi reveals,” when Bunny Ruben came up with the title —The Rebel Star! Rebelling against the reigning trio — Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand!”

And sure enough, the label adhered. Shammi had correctly assessed the mood of the times and after Dil Deke Dekho’s thumping affirmation came the conclusive success of Junglee (’61). Even today Shammi Kapoor’s knees hurt because he bruised himself severely as he came rolling down a snow bank in Junglee, the hills reverberating with his ‘yahoo’. An entire decade reeled under its colourful impact. The snow, songs and Simla sagas ruled over the 60′s.

Shammi’s songs were, of course, in step with the swinging 60′s. A large part of Shammi’s appeal was primarily due to the immensely catchy and upbeat numbers like `Suku Suku’, ‘O haseena zulfonwali’ and `Aaj kal tere mere pyar ke charche’. His predecessor, Dev Anand too had many a breezy number but significantly, while Dev’s songs were gentlemanly, Shammi projected boisterous sensuality. His paroxysmic dance movements to an `Aaja aaja main hoon pyar tera’ had the girls irrevocably drawn into his fascinating magnetic field.

Unfortunately, his films like Kashmir Ki Kali, Rajkumar, Jaanwar and An Evening In Paris, though successful, were largely light weight tales about the skirmishes of the sexes. The critics dismissed him as less of an actor and more of a purveyor of monkey tricks who inspired  titles like Junglee, Janwar; Budtameez, Bluff Master and Pagla Kahin Ka and so on. But with his highly charged performance as the suspect in Teesri Manzil, and his sensitive underplaying as the child-loving bachelor of Brahmachari, Shammi flexed his emotive muscles and surprised his skeptics.

The nattily dressed nabob of the box office, Shammi had 100 suits, 120 shirts, 50 sweaters and innumerable affairs. After his beloved wife, Geeta Bali’s death, Shammi tried to overcome the wounds on his psyche through sensuality. His liaisons were many as he swung from one solipsistic sensation to another. Stability re-entered his life when he married Neela Devi, the daughter of the Maharaja of Bhavnagar. This incredible lady stood beside him when his films started flopping. His burgeoning weight necessitated his quitting films despite the success of Andaaz (’71), and he increasingly veered towards spiritualism.

Today, Shammi Kapoor is a computer aficionado, resting on the fruits of his histrionic labours. But even now, video parlours vouch his films as the easiest to rent. His fame endures as a typical 60s artifact.

Shammi Kapoor and Saira Bano in Junglee (1961)

Shammi Kapoor yelled ‘Yahoo!’ and became a new kind of hero for the 1960s. Raj Kapoor’s younger brother had shaved off his trademark pencil moustache in the 1950s and created a new Elvis-style image for the Indian hero as he danced to western-style songs in nightclubs and discos. His physical presence dominated the screen, with his height, striking fairness and endless energy as he danced and pulled comic faces while wooing the new style of heroine, leading a whole generation of young men to imitate his style. Raj Kapoor never found a hero’s role for his younger brother in his films, and Shammi was linked with the Filmistan ‘film factory’, with directors such as Subodh Mukherji and Nasir Hussain, as well as Shakti Samanta, who followed their style. Shammi worked with the most glamorous of a new generation of actresses — Asha Parekh, Saira Banu and Sharmila Tagore.

Mohammed Rafi sang Shammi’s songs with a panache and flair suited to the dancing hero, perhaps surprising those who knew the gravitas and dignity he bestowed on romantic heroes, such as Dilip Kumar and Guru Dutt in the 1950s. Few other singers have the range he displayed in this film, from the dance numbers to the ever popular ghazal, ‘Ehsaan tera hoga mujh par’.

Junglee was one of the first of the decade’s light romances to be shot in colour, which it used to great advantage on locations in snowy mountains and on elaborate sets, such as for Suku Suku, which has an MGM-style set of a giant artist’s palette and an unexplained troupe of Russian dancers. Shammi plays the businessman returned from foreign climes, whose mother is intent on keeping the family away from love and laughter and focused instead on the business and accumulating wealth. Shammi’s seriousness is presented as ridiculous and makes him a figure of fun, a ‘stuffed shirt’. When he falls in love with Rajkumari (Saira Banu), his world is turned upside down and, although his realization of love begins with Urdu poetry, the real epiphany occurs when he leaps around the snow yelling ‘Yahoo!’(‘Chahe koi mujhe junglee kahe’). The newly romantic hero resists his mother’s attempts to marry him off to a princess (a rajkumari) by pretending to be mad. Although he will not marry Rajkumari without his mother’s permission, he reveals the princess to be a fraud put forward by her scheming family, before he and his sister, who elopes with her lover, persuade the mother to become more loving and give up her ‘patriarchal’ role. The theme of young lovers obeying their parents, while persuading them that love is the answer, is a regular theme of Hindi films even up to the present.

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1961, Genre – Drama, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Subodh Mukherji Production, Director – Subodh Mukerji, Music Director – Shanker Jaikishan, Cast - Helen, Shammi Kapoor, Saira Banu, Shashikala, Anoop Kumar, Azra, Sangeeta, Asit Sen, Rajen Haksar, Shivraj, Lalita Pawar

Teesri Manzil (1966)

Cast: Shammi Kapoor, Asha Parekh, Premnath, Helen

Director: Vijay Anand

Music: R.D. Burman

Lyrics: Majrooh Sultanpuri

Capsule Review: Blending producer Nasir  Husain’s trademark formula of frolic and romancewith director Vijay Anand’s penchant for using song, dance and drama as extensions of the characters’ inner world, Teesri Manzil created a storm at the box office. The plot is a murder mystery about a girl befriending a musician at a hill station to find out the identity of her sister’s killer. Much of the plot seems an excuse for Burman’s rousing songs rendered with glorious gusto by Mohammad Rafi and Asha Bhosle. In his first major tryst with the hit parade, Burman created smash-hit tracks like 0 mere sona re, 0 haseena zulfon wall, Aaja aaja main hoon pyar tera and the uncharacteristically sober Rafi solo Tumne mujhe dekha which was filmed immediately after the leading man’s wife Geeta Bali passed away. One of the lead pair’s biggest hits, Kapoor and Parekh somehow failed to click together in subsequent projects like Jawan Mohabbat and Pagla Kahin Ka.