Uttam Kumar Born Arun Kumar Chatterjee 3 September 1926 Ahiritola, Calcutta, Bengal, British India Died 24 July 1980 (aged 53) Tollygunge, Calcutta, West Bengal, India Occupation Actor Producer Director, Music Director, Playback singer Years active 1948–1980 Height 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m) Spouse(s) Gauri Chatterjee Children Gautam Chatterjee Signature Uttam Kumar signature.jpg Website mahanayak/ Uttam Kumar (born Arun Kumar Chatterjee) (3 September 1926 – 24 July 1980) was an Indian film actor, director, producer, singer and music composer who predominantly worked in Bengali Cinema.[1] He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and classic actors of Indian cinema and known as honorific Mahanayak. He remains as much of a cultural icon. Through his career he has earned commercial as well as critical adulation.[2] Considered as one of the most popular film stars in the history of Indian cinema, Kumar managed to have a huge fan following, that mainly concentrated in the regions of Bengal and Bangladesh. In his lifetime, he was a recipient of many awards, including National Film Award for Best Actor. In his honour, a Metro Station was renamed in Kolkata. Early life and family Uttam Kumar was born in Kolkata at the home of his maternal uncle at Ahiritola, while his ancestral house is on Girish Mukherjee Road, Bhowanipore. After his schooling in South Suburban School (Main), he went for higher studies in Goenka College of Commerce and Business Administration, a college affiliated to the University of Calcutta. He could not complete his studies and started working at the Kolkata Port trust as a clerk. During this period, he acted in amateur theatre groups. His prodigious joint family had its own theatre group, the Suhrid Samaj, which staged many amateur shows. Uttam Kumar was the eldest of three sons (Arun, Barun and Tarun) of Satkari Chatterjee and Chapala Debi. The youngest, whose screen name was Tarun Kumar, acted in several Bengali films and grew to become an actor of considerable repute, in screen and on stage. There are several films in which Uttam Kumar and Tarun Kumar starred together like Saptapadi, Sonar Harin, Maya Mriga, Sesh Anka, Deya Neya, Jeeban-Mrityu, Dhanyi Meye,Mon Niye, Sanyasi Raja, Kamal lata and Agniswar. Uttam Kumar married Gauri Debi [Chatterjee][nee Ganguly]. Their only son, Gautam, died of cancer at the age of 53. His grandson, Gaurav Chatterjee[3] is a Bengali television actor. Pulak Bandyopadhyay, a noted lyricist, was his uncle. Rajesh Khanna once said about Kumar: He is the perfect ambassador of Bengal. No one carries Bengali culture in a Kurta and Dhoti as well as he does. Career Debut and breakthrough Uttams first release was Drishtidan (The gift of sight, 1948) directed by Nitin Bose, though he worked in an earlier unreleased film called Mayador (Embrace of affection).Then he acted in about four to five flims,all of which were flops.In those films he constantly varied his name as:Arun Chatterjee,Arun Kumar,Uttam Chatterjee and finally Uttam Kumar.He dubbed as the Flop Master General.When he used to enter the studio,people would laugh at him and pass comments likeHere comes the new Durgadas....Meet the new Chabbi Biswas...He even considered leaving the world of cinema forever and would work at Calcutta Ports.But,his wife Gouri Chatterjee told him that it better not to do a job as his heart is not in it.He later got the contact at M.P Studios for three years.M.P studios produced the film Basu Paribar in which he came into the prominence,but his breakthrough film was Agni Parikshain 1954 that began the success of the all-time romantic pair of Uttam Kumar - Suchitra Sen, though they had first paired in Sharey Chuattor.The film ran for a record 15 weeks and established Uttam in the industry. Commercial cinema in the form of films like Uttam Kumar starrer Basu Paribar (1952) and the iconic Uttam–Suchitra pairing in Sharey Chuattor (1953), did tremendous business. Explaining the emergence of parallel cinema at time when commercial cinema was doing extremely well with hero s like Uttam Kumar taking on a cult status, Soumitra Chatterjee, who starred in many of Satyajit Ray’s films explained: “Uttam Kumar alone was not able to fulfill every part of the hero that Bengali audiences wished to see on the screen … there are different kinds of people in life … other kinds of young men, other kinds of romances … possibly that is why audiences found a parallel screen hero in myself.”[4] On the background of the mass migration from the then East Pakistan to Calcutta, the Uttam-Suchitra pair gave expression to the yearnings of a new, transformed city.[citation needed] They played out on screen the new desires of a young audience trying to come to terms with industrial modernity and a new form of urban existence.[citation needed] The stylised, black-and-white romanticism of landmark Uttam-Suchitra films of the 1950s like Agni Pariksha, Shapmochan,Sagarika (1956), Shilpi (1956), or Harano Sur, Indrani, Sabar Uparey, Surjyo Toron reflected a novel, youthful urban desire to break free from the confines of the feudal joint family and set up a nucleated, private space for the couple in love. In contrast to the earlier phase of Bengali cinema mostly dominated by the dramatised style of the New Theaters films (in the 1940s), the Uttam-Suchitra films were marked by a more naturalistic acting style, a bit dramatic-stylized, soft-focus black-and-white cinematography with chiaroscuro effects, and a more popular and modern form of music that broke away more decisively from earlier dependence on classical types. These features were put in place by a new generation of cinematographers like Dinen Gupta and Ajoy Kar, a fresh batch of directors (Kar himself,Sudhir Mukherjee, Naresh Mitra, Sushil Majumdar, the combines of Jatrik and Agradoot) and musicians like Nachiketa Ghosh, Rabin Chattopadhyay, Anupam Ghatak, Hemanta Mukherjee Anil Bagchi, Sudhin Dasgupta and Salil Chowdhury, along with lyricists like Gauriprasanna Majumdar, Pranab Roy, Pulak Bandopadhyay. A number of them hailed from the left wing Indian Peoples Theater Association (IPTA) movement, popularly known as Gananatya Sangha. Uttam Kumar was especially adored for his effortless naturalism in front of the camera and a distinctively urbane charisma that broke free from the prototypical Bengali screen hero of the past.[citation needed] He went on to form successful screen pairs with many leading ladies like Suchitra Sen, Supriya Choudhuri, Sabitri Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee, Sharmila Tagore, Anjana Bhaumick, Aparna Sen and Sumitra Mukherjee, apart from Sandhyarani in the 50s, Arundhati Debi and Mala Sinha in the 60s and Kaberi Bose and Tanuja in the 60s and 70s. He acted in Nayak by Satyajit Ray in which the master-director scripts the rise of a young actor with an ordinary background to a star sought after by one and all. In fact, this film may be considered as a tribute to Uttam Kumar.[citation needed] Often hailed as the one-man industry, Uttam Kumar dominated Bengali cinema for three decades until his death. This near-total reign was somewhat slightly disturbed during the politically turbulent era of the late sixties up to the Emergency, when Uttam Kumars regular, politically passive or relatively conservative romantic film persona sometimes found it difficult to fit into the narratives of unrest that came to the fore. Never quite satisfied with his undisputed matinée idol status, Uttam Kumar started experimenting with character roles early in his career, as evidenced by films like Khokababur Pratyabartan, (1960), Mayamriga, (1960) or Thana Theke Aschi (1965) and Bicharak. In Marutirtha Hinglaj (1959), he essayed a mentally disturbed character. In Kuhak he was a murderous thief, while in Sesh Anka, he was a suave businessman who had murdered his wife and was romantically engaged to the daughter of a social elite and rich nobleman. In Aparichita (1969) he also played the role of a villain. Such departures were unusual in relation to set formats of stardom in Indian popular cinematic cultures, where deviating from established star images were often considered to be risky. However, this brought Uttam Kumar early recognition as a genuine actor of substance apart from a box office superstar and stood him in good stead later, especially in his collaborations with Satyajit Ray in Nayak (1966) and Chiriyakhana. A perfectionist, Uttam Kumar performed on stage for a full year, opposite Sabitri Chatterjee in Star Theatre in the play Shyamali [On screen, he played opposite Kaberi Bose]to hone up his skill as an actor.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 02:09:13 +0000
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