According to film historian and writer Saadat Hasan Manto, Paro was a courtesan from Meerut where she was a big hit with all the rich men of the city. Among those who frequented her kotha were the poets Josh Maleehabadi and Saghar Nizami. She was financially well off. All she wanted now was to become an actress.
How Paro Devi landed in Hindi film industry is not known. Some of Paro Devi’s clientele may have been from the Hindi film industry and one of whom may have recommended her name to Shashdhar Mukherjee of Filmistan when he was finalising the cast for the film “Shikaari’ (1946). It is interesting to note that both Josh Malihabadi and Saghar Nizami were involved with Hindi film industry at that time.
Paro Devi started her acting career with Filmistan’s ‘Shikaari’ (1946). In the film, Ashok Kumar and Veera were in lead roles. Paro Devi had a side role as a Burmese tribal girl who was head strong and aggressive. But in view of her background as an entertainer with pleasing manners, the film’s director had lots of difficulties in getting from her the required expression and delivering the dialogues in commensurate with her role in the film. Since as courtesan, singing came to her naturally, in this film, she sang her own songs. The film was a huge box office hit. With this, Paro Devi as an actor-singer signalled her arrival in Hindi film industry.
During 1946 to 1950, Paro Devi acted in 16 films, but barring a couple of films, she was mostly in the capacity of what is known as a side heroine/character. During this period, she sang around 40 songs on herself. However, because of her peculiar voice quality which was more suited for coquettish songs than the soft love songs, she had to lip sync in the voices of other playback singers. For instance, in ‘Shabnam’ (1949), Shamshad Begum sang four songs for her including tumhaare liye huye badnaam.
Later, she played supporting roles in many films including Do Bhai (1947), Sargam (1950), Angarey (1954) etc. Her most memorable role was opposite Dilip Kumar and Kamini Kaushal in Shabnam (1949). The film was a box-office success mainly because of its dances and music. Three of the Mukesh-Shamshad duets were picturized on her and Dilip Kumar – Tumhare liye huwe badnaam, Tu mehloun mein rehnai walie and Pyar mein tumne dhoka seekha.
Paro also produced Nakhare (1951) under the banner of Paro pictures.
She was fairly active in her acting career which spanned for nearly 35 years during which she acted in 88 films.
One of Paro Devi’s rare songs is ‘waada yaad karke….chale aana morey raaja waada yaad karke’ from the film ‘HEERA’ (1947). It is a duet sung with G M Durrani. The song is written by Qamar Jalalabadi which is set to music by Husnlal-Bhagatram. Out of the 11 songs in the film, as many as 8 songs have been rendered by Paro Devi- both solos and duets. This was one of the very few occasions when she got the lead role in a film. The hero was Ishwarlal who also directed the film.
http://cineplot.com/paro-devi/
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