Remembering Bhaijaan Mehmood 1932-2004

Mehmood was born on September 29, 1932 in Bombay.
Chaplin said, “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”
It’s difficult to imagine Hindi film comedy without Bollywood’s original Bhaijaan, but he had a rough personal life starting from his father’s alcoholism to his son’s disability and the financial responsibility of tending to the large family. In fact, he often dwelt on the irony of his life. He used to say that he made people laugh for a living but wondered why his own life was so sad and tragic.
Mehmood may have long passed away but his influence is evident in the comic styles of David Dhawan, Govinda, Sajid Khan, Johnny Lever, Ritesh Deshmukh – the list is endless.
A Mehmood movie comes with an assurance of fun, frolic, drama, dance and great music. Well, dancing came naturally to him and so did acting and performance. His father, Mumtaz Ali, was a great dancer-actor in the 1940s.

The acting career of Mehmood began as an unwilling child actor in Bombay Talkies films like Kismet. Before he began working in movies, Mehmood did odd jobs like driving, selling poultry and so on. He used to be the driver of film director P L Santoshi. And later, it was Santoshi's son, Rajkumar Santoshi who gave Mehmood an opportunity to star in his venture Andaz Apna Apna. In this movie, Mehmood was employed to teach table tennis to actress Meena Kumari. The life history of Mehmood Ali's career blossomed after his marriage to Madhu, who was the sister of Meena Kumari. It was post wedding and becoming a father that Mehmood decided to take his acting career seriously. So he got a minor break as a murder victim in the film CID starring actor Dev Anand. He got very insignificant roles initially in movies like Do Bigha Zameen and Pyaasa. When he went on to act in lead roles, he was really appreciated by the audience for his comedy.
Mehmood went on to develop his own style of comedy. At his peak, he was paid more than the film’s hero and it’s easy to see why. With top dollars rolling in, he was living a flamboyant life. A big spendthrift, he bought a farm just to keep his horses. He loved cars and at one point he owned a fleet of 24 cars including a Stingray, Dodge, Impala, MG, Jaguar and others,” his brother Anwar Ali recollected in a 2015 Filmfare interview. Reportedly, his then-protégé Amitabh Bachchan would steal from Mehmood’s car collection to “impress his girlfriends.”
Some of the famous films he worked in are Zindagi (1964), Gumnaam (1965), Pyar Kiye Ja (1966), Love in Tokyo (1966), Patthar ke Sanam (1967), Padosan (1968) , Aankhen (1968), Do Phool (1968) and several others. Some famous Bollywood songs for which people still remember Mehmood are 'Ek chatur naar' from film Padosan, 'Aao Twist Karen' from Bhoot Bangla, 'Yeh do deewane dil ke' from Johar Mehmood in Goa, 'Hum kaale hai to kyaa huaa dilwaale hain' from Gumnaam and so on. He received the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award for Dil Tera Diwana and Filmfare Best Comedian Award twice for films Pyar Kiye Jaa and for Vardaan.
Sadly, Mehmood died in his sleep on 23 July 2004 at Pennsylvania the United States. He had gone there for the treatment of a lung disease after suffering from poor health for several years. Later his fans, family and friends gave him a grand homage at the Mehmood studio in Mumbai.