It is the 90th birth anniversary of Sunil Dutt, who was born June 6, 1928, in Jhelum district, which is now Pakistan. The genial star was much loved not only by his wife Nargis and children Namrata, Sanjay and Priya but by fans and industry folk who swore by his helpful, proactive nature. Here’s recounting little-known facts about this actor-filmmaker…
The 1964 film Yaadein, which was directed and produced by Sunil Dutt, was the world's first feature film to star only one actor. While the movie starred Sunil Dutt, his wife Nargis Dutt featured only as a silhouette in the climax. Guinness World Records also recognized it for having the 'fewest actors in a narrative film'.
RECOMMENDED READ: SUNIL DUTT – NARGIS, DHARMENDRA – DIMPLE, SRK – ALIA AND OTHER UNUSUAL CASTING COUPS
Dutt, with his lovely voice, had started out with radio. He was very popular on the Hindi Service of Radio Ceylon, the oldest radio station in South Asia. It was in 1955 with Railway Platform that he moved to acting and made his Hindi film debut.
He had been injured in a fire on the sets of Mother India. Dutt had apparently braved the raging flames to rescue Nargis. They fell in love and wed in 1958. After his beloved wife died of pancreatic cancer, he founded the Nargis Dutt Foundation in her memory for the cure of cancer patients.
One of the major stars of Hindi cinema in the late 1950s and 1960s, his best films include Sadhna (1958), Sujata (1959), Mujhe Jeene Do (1963), Khandan (1965), Padosan (1967), Gumraah (1963), Waqt (1965) and Hamraaz (1967).
While Dutt Sr. and son Sanjay had featured in Rocky (1981) and Kshatriya (1993) they did not have scenes together. It was in 2003 hit Munna Bhai MBBS that Sunil Dutt shared screen time with his son and won audience’s hearts all over again. He passed away two years later in 2005.
In 1987 Sunil Dutt had led a 1,250-mile (2,000-km) peace march from Mumbai to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, to pray for peace when Sikh militancy was at its height in Punjab. In 1988, responding to an appeal for global disarmament, he went to Japan and walked from Nagasaki to Hiroshima (both cities were targets of U.S. atomic bombs during World War II).
