ENTERTAINMENT
REDEFINED - ILLOGICAL
MAN - MOHAN DESAI
DREAM……fantasize….dream
even bigger and portray the same on celluloid.
Manmohan Desai aka Manji as he was fondly called was an exciting Dream
Merchant and an Entertainer par excellence of Bollywood. Leave your brain at home when you go to a
movie auditorium to watch a Manmohan Desai film. He was an outright entertainer without any
logic and he had no pretentions whatsoever that his productions are serious
cinema.
He was the Miracle Man of Bollywood and the uncrowned King of Bollywood of his
heydays in the late 1970s. The maverick Filmmaker
of 1960s, 1970s and 1980s during his career span of 29 years (1960-1989) he was
involved with many films out of which 13 was blockbuster mega hits. His success
ratio was 65%. His films with Amitabh
Bachchan in the late 1970s and 1980’s were phenomenal super hits. He truly believed that nothing succeeds like
success.
Manmohan Desai
(1937-1994) was a Director, Writer and Producer of Bollywood films. He was born in Mumbai and shot most of his
films in Mumbai City.
The man who firmly
believed in the “Lost and Found” formula left behind an indelible mark in
Bollywood film history, with films that spun magic with great music, top order
performances and thoroughly enjoyable storylines that worked even with a touch
of incredulity.
You must be wondering why Manmohan Desai has been given a mention in JOHNNY’S BLOG. My nostalgic feelings about Manji and his
production house MKD Films where I literally started my career graph in Mumbai
tempted me to write a post about him.
Though it was a brief stint I got an opportunity to encounter the great
entertainer in his prime glory and that was the time his most popular movie
“AMAR AKBAR ANTHONY” was running to packed houses in Mumbai cinemas and Manji
was celebrating that success. MKD Films
was situated at “Pratap Niwas” in Jeevan
Complex, Khetwadi, Mumbai, a modest destination in Mumbai City. MKD Films had Mr. Ashok B. Desai and Mr.
Milind Joshi apart from myself as key
staff members. I was greeted by
Mrs.Jeevanprabha Desai, his wife, with a steaming cup of coffee and a pleasant
smile in the mornings in this residence-cum-office. She was a kind and sweet
person. His young son Mr. Ketan Desai
was a nice guy too.
Mr. Siddharth Bhatia’s
book titled “Amar Akbar Anthony” was reviewed in an open session at Godrej
Culture Lab in 2013 in the presence of
the author wherein I have shared my experience with Manji to a thunderous
applause of the participants who were mainly from affluent South Mumbai other
than Godrejites.
He was a hardworking
filmmaker and he had directed five highly successful films in a single year
1977 namely Amar Akbar Anthony, Dharamveer, Parvarish, Chacha Bhatija and
Suhaag. He used to switch his shifts
from one film set to another and created this record of directing five films in
a single year possible. The song “Anhonee Ko Honee Kar De…(meaning Make the
Impossible Possible) from his film Amar Akbar Anthony was a befitting testimony
for this success.
Not only his heroes are
unbelievable but also the scenes in his films are unbelievable. In one of his films India’s answer to the
strong man Samson or Arnold Schwarzannegar - Dhara Singh tying an air plane to
a pole bar to prevent it from taking off was a make-believe spoof. As Manji says that he does not believe in
logic as long as his audience enjoyed his film sequences. He admits that he himself is an unbelievable
person.
Interestingly, Manji was known to do some of the
craziest stuff but it always worked for him.
Remember the famous `blood donation’ scene, where
three sons of a mother donate her blood at the same time! The scene was
criticized for being a medical improbability. Three separate tubes carry the
men’s blood to a suspended bottle from where one tube carries the collected
blood to the mother Bharti (Nirupa Roy)!
The sequence is a medical impossibility. But
Desai did it and it is said that when the scene opened, there was unbelievable
applause in the theatre. That’s the unique and highly saleable creativity that
director Manmohan Desai exhibited.
Amar Akbar Anthony, the evergreen entertainer which has captivated
millions of movie lovers continues to be one of the most remembered films for
its performances, dialogues and scenes.
Amar Akbar Anthony deserves a separate mention at the end of this blog
post.
The maverick Filmmaker Manmohan Desai etched his place in history of Bollywood
for delivering some of the biggest hits that whizzed audiences away into a
world of make-believe, where simple people did wondrous things and made you
laugh and cry with them.
The song ‘My name
is Anthony Gonsalves’ begins with these lines spoken by Anthony
in one go when he emerges from the Easter egg – “You see, the whole country
of the system is juxtapositioned by the hemoglobin in the atmosphere because
you are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of your own
verbosity.” It is an almost exact quotation from a speech in the
Parliament of the United Kingdom given by British Prime Minister Benjamin
Disraeli in 1878. Disraeli (who was referring to William Ewart Gladstone) used
the word “inebriated” rather than “intoxicated.”
Manmohan Desai was often criticized for his
absurd themes and story lines - blind people in his films suddenly regain sight
and twins separated at birth are reunited under bizarre circumstances - but he
never sought to justify the nature of his work, saying he made movies to help
people forget their tensions and worries. If any of his films carried a social
message, it was incidental, he said. Desai had a keen wit and sharp repartee and
his modest way of life changed little with success.
Manmohan Desai was known for his hot
temperament and anger a fact none of his biographers tried to avoid. His confession about vices was also
noteworthy. He never used to drink alcohol, was not a smoker and never
gambled. His weakness was the fairer
sex. Let us see what he spoke to Connie
Haham who had written a book about him.
Excerpted from Enchantment of
the Mind: Manmohan Desai’s Films; by Connie Haham
Manmohan: his name literally meant
‘mind charmer’ ' Man: mind; Mohan: enchantment, charm. It was a fitting name
considering the enchanting fantasy that he brought to the screen. Manmohan
Desai himself saw his name in a different light and found it appropriate for
other reasons:
“Manmohan is one of the names of
Krishna. My father and mother must have given me the name because they knew I’d
turn out a womanizer; they gave me the correct name. Once I told my wife that
if I womanize, it’s not my fault. My father gave me the name Manmohan, that
Charlie who had 1,000 gopis ' women ' around him. So if I have a couple.
She said, ‘That’s no excuse!’”
While at one moment Desai was ready
to use his namesake’s activities as a rationalization for his own behavior, at
other moments he vehemently lashed out against the lord he considered to be
unworthy of worship:
“Krishna! He’s no god! He left
Rukmani for Radha. Why glorify a man who has a mistress, who was a womanizer
with all those gopis! And he won the whole Mahabharata war by
cheating, by deceit, treachery. I have no respect for Krishna. He makes my
blood boil. I’ve talked to pundits, but they can’t answer my questions about
Krishna!”
Manmohan Desai was as energetic
talking as film-making. His boisterous enthusiasm whipped contagiously through
the room as he added rhythm and emphasis to his speech by raising his arms,
beating the air and slapping the back of one hand against the palm of the
other. Finally, he punctuated his sentences with a nervous tick, drawing his
forefinger assertively under his nose to the accompaniment of a loud sniff. He
spoke at such a rapid clip that it was often difficult to catch each word, but
when he decelerated, his intonation became eloquently lilting. His voice was
that of a much younger man, and in 1984 at 46, when he broke into song, one
could easily have divided his age in half. By his own admission, he was no
diplomat. His rage at his pet peeves was unapologetic, uncompromising, and
easily provoked. Lord Krishna, school, and art films were a few of the subjects
that sparked his fury.
“I had a very tough time between 1960
and 1970, the 10 worst years of my life. That’s when my wife stood by me like a
rock. A great lady she was. I couldn’t
have asked for a better wife than that'. She said, ‘Don’t give up films.’ And I
used to think up ideas in the night. I couldn’t get to sleep. I’d wake up my
wife. I’d wake up my son. ‘Please, look, I made up this idea. Here’s a plot.’ She
would hear me for two hours. She would say, ‘Now it’s late, Manmohan. Go to
sleep. Okay'’ We’ll hear it in the morning.’ I am what I am because of her. She
prayed for me. She stood by me and was very possessive. Naturally, since we had
a love marriage, I wasn’t supposed to monkey around after marriage. But I did.
She didn’t like that. But she looked after me and my home. She was very loyal
to me, very faithful, looked after every need of mine.
“Now I realize. There’s a saying: you
know a person’s worth when he’s not there. Why a person any object, for that
matter. You only know when it’s not there. Now I think she might have been my
spinal cord, my backbone. I never had to bother in my house whether anything
was there or not. So I miss her. Now my spinal cord is my son. I suppose all filmmakers
are womanizers in a way. Anyway, I don’t like to be a hypocrite and say I’m a
person of virtue. No. But just one vice! Others have plenty. I used to say to
my wife, ‘Look, in the film world, people drink, smoke; they gamble; they go to
the races. I don’t do all that. I only womanize.’
“She said, ‘That’s no excuse.’
“But my weakness is like my father’s.
My brother died in August, 1983. He was elder than me by six years: cirrhosis
of the liver. So I always told him, ‘We have divided the vices in our family.’
He never womanized. He only drank ' cards, races, smoking ' no womanizing. I
suppose any man who thinks, who works mentally, he needs a diversion. Alcohol
is not a good diversion. I feel alcohol benumbs your nerves in the long run. So
I don’t take refuge in alcohol, nor in gambling. I don’t like to lose. I’m a
bad loser. So I said my only refuge is womanizing. But I used to get in trouble
with my wife.”
Comments from other famous
filmmakers
Shyam Benegal, New Cinema director who has gained recognition worldwide,
was generous in his praise of Manmohan Desai:
“I enjoy Manmohan Desai’s films. I would never miss one. Manmohan Desai
is definitely the best of the big mainstream directors. Amar Akbar Anthony is
my favorite.
“I respect Manmohan Desai for his honesty, for never having claimed to be
anything but an entertainer. In this respect, he is a success. Manmohan Desai’s
films are great fun. He has taken a stereotype and changed it into an
archetype. He has created a new mythology. It’s very clever, too, the way he
can use the same material over and over again, refining it each time.
“I think Manmohan Desai is totally uninterested in social messages;
everything happens by miracle on screen. People leave the cinema without taking
any messages, but they have been thoroughly entertained.”
Amitab Bachchan’s fatal injury while shooting for Manmohan Desai’s
film Coolie
It
was on 25 July 1982 on the sets of Coolie
that Amitabh
Bachchan had his near-fatal accident;
an overly realistic punch by villain Puneet Issar in the stomach and a fall against a sharp-edged
table led to life-endangering complications. It was Amitabh Bachchan’s near and
dear and his fans across India and the world whose prayer that saved
Amitabh Bachchan’s life from that near
fatal blow. This injury troubled Amitab
Bachchan throughout his life.
Filmography
| 1960 |
Chhalia |
Raj Kapoor, Nutan, Pran, Rehman, Shobhna Samarth |
|
| 1963 |
Bluff Master |
Shammi Kapoor, Saira Banu, Pran, Lalita Pawar |
|
| 1966 |
Budtameez |
Shammi Kapoor, Sadhana, Manorama |
|
| 1968 |
Kismat |
Biswajeet, Babita, Helen, Kamal Mehra |
|
| 1970 |
Sachaa Jhutha |
Rajesh Khanna, Mumtaz, Vinod Khanna |
|
| 1972 |
Raampur Ka Lakshman |
Randhir Kapoor, Rekha, Shatrughan Sinha |
|
| 1973 |
Aa Gale Lag Jaa |
Shashi Kapoor, Sharmila Tagore, Shatrughan Sinha, Om Prakash |
|
| 1972 |
Bhai Ho To Aisa |
Jeetendra, Hema Malini, Shatrughan Sinha |
|
| 1974 |
Roti |
Rajesh Khanna, Mumtaz, Om Prakash, Vijay Arora, Nirupa Roy |
|
| 1977 |
Parvarish |
Amitabh Bachchan, Shammi Kapoor, Vinod Khanna, Neetu Singh, Shabana Azmi |
|
| 1977 |
Dharam Veer |
Dharmendra, Zeenat Aman, Jeetendra, Neetu Singh, Pran |
|
| 1977 |
Chacha Bhatija |
Dharmendra, Randhir Kapoor, Rehman, Hema Malini, Yogeeta Bali |
|
| 1977 |
Amar Akbar Anthony |
Amitabh Bachchan, Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor, Parveen Babi, Neetu Singh, Shabana Azmi, Pran |
|
| 1979 |
Suhaag |
Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, Rekha, Parveen Babi |
|
| 1981 |
Naseeb |
Amitabh Bachchan, Shatrughan Sinha, Rishi Kapoor, Hema Malini, Reena Roy, Kim |
|
| 1982 |
Desh Premee |
Amitabh Bachchan, Shammi Kapoor, Sharmila Tagore, Hema Malini, Parveen Babi |
|
| 1983 |
Coolie |
Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, Rati Agnihotri, Waheeda Rehman, Kader Khan |
|
| 1985 |
Mard |
Amitabh Bachchan, Amrita Singh, Nirupa Roy, Dara Singh |
|
| 1988 |
Ganga Jamuna Saraswati |
Amitabh Bachchan, Mithun Chakraborty, Meenakshi Sheshadri, Jaya Prada |
|
| 1989 |
Toofan |
Amitabh Bachchan, Meenakshi Seshadri, Amrita Singh |
Producer |
| 1993 |
Anmol |
Manisha Koirala, Rishi Kapoor, |
Producer |
| 2006 |
Dus |
Sanjay Dutt, Sunil Shetty, Abhishek Bachchan, Zayed Khan |
Presenter |
(For movie poster images google Manmohan Desai Movies)
A Brief Biography :-
Manmohan Desai, film director and producer: born Mumbai 26 February 1937; married 1959 Jeevanprabha Gandhi (one son); died
Bombay 1 March 1994.
Desai was born in 1937
in Mumbai, the son of a moderately well-known producer and director of
entertaining stunt films. After school Desai attended St Xavier's College, in Mumbai, but left before graduating for a career in films, and was apprenticed
to Babubhai Mistry, a well- known film director. In 1960, at the age of 23,
Desai made his directorial debut with Chhalia ('Trickster'), which starred two
of the most popular stars of the day and was moderately successful at the
box-office.
Born to a Gujarati couple Kalavati and Kikubhai
Desai, Manmohan Desai moved to the Khetwadi locality in Mumbai at the age of
four. Mumbai, the city of dreams and dream merchants had always been his home.
This love for the city of Mumbai was often portrayed on the screen in his
movies.
Not many had heard of Khetwadi then in the early
80’s. There was a time when the nondescript Khetwadi was not reflected in the
maps of the city. No doubt the taxi drivers gave blank look when asked for the
address for MKD Films.
Desai had film making in his blood stream.
His father was a film producer who owned Paramount Studios (later Filmalaya)
and made films, mainly stunt films, between 1931 and 1941. When his father
passed away at a young age of 39 due to a ruptured appendix, the family plunged
into heavy liabilities and debts.
Desai’s mother was pretty clear about not wanting
to “live with debts”. She sold off the massive bungalow they owned in Versova
and the cars to repay the debts. Only thing that she did not sell was the
studio as it was the source of their monthly income then.
Desai’s first directorial film was Chhalia with actor Raj Kapoor in
the lead role. The movie was shot in black-and-white and the title song “Chhalia
Mera Naam” became a hit. Desai’s creative thoughts and inputs regarding
the plot or storyline were mostly drawn up below the famous landmark restaurant
Café Naaz on the slopes at Malabar Hill.
He did not appreciate the idea where Chhalia ended
on sad note. He always believed in a happy ending even if it did mean making
the impossible possible. No doubt he was regarded as the master entertainer
whose passion was to please the mass audience with happy endings. His career
graph became more popular between the years from 1960 to 1988. Out of the
20 films that Desai directed in his career span of 29 years (1960–1989), as
many as 13 films were stupendous hits, a remarkable success ratio for an
industry where box-office disasters abound despite huge budgets and star casts.
The characters that depicted in his movies were
mostly the common people – be it the person on the railway platform Coolie,
the waiter in Naseeb or the Anglo Indian from the streets of Bandra in
Amar Akbar Anthony. The confidence he exhibited in etching each of
these characters which later became iconic proves that this master entertainer
knew the pulse of the audience.
Despite his roaring success, Desai remained at
heart a middle class man. He would hardly ever miss his hour-long afternoon
siesta, whether it is the shooting location or elsewhere and would emerge from
it fresh and recharged. After the success of his movie Amar Akbar Anthony
he bought an aristocratic apartment designed with modern amenities in one of
the most expensive places in Mumbai then. But, his heart was always in Khetwadi
the colony that belonged to the middle class people of Central Mumbai.
In most of the Manmohan Desai films one thing was
evident; he always showcased his profound respect for the mother figure. He
said, “In my films I always talk about ‘Ma Sherovali’. I feel a woman is a
supreme creation. It is she who conceives, she who bears the child after nine
months, she who takes care through hardships. She brings into the world a new
life. I rate them very high. I am a great believer in Durga, Amba and Lakshmi.”
If you look at films like Suhaag, Amar Akbar Anthony, Mard, the mother
figure plays a prominent role in the hero’s life.
Though Desai started his career with a love story
Chhalia, he found his real form in action-packed multi-starrers such
as Naseeb, Suhaag, Parvarish, Coolie, Mard, Desh Premee and Dharam
Veer. In fact, he repeated his successful male lead actor in at least one
more film and so his repertoire involves two films with Rajesh Khanna (Roti
and Sachcha Jhootha), two with Dharmendra (Chacha Bhatija and
Dharam Veer), two with Randhir Kapoor (Chacha Bhatija and Rampur
Ka Lakshman), two with Shashi Kapoor (Suhaag and Aa Gale Lag
Jaa), two with Jeetendra (Dharam Veer and Bhai Ho To Aisa)
and four with Shatrughan Sinha (Naseeb, Bhai Ho To Aisa, Aa Gale Lag Jaa
and Rampur Ka Lakshman).
But it was his association with Amitabh Bachchan
that became legendary. One after the other the duo delivered a string of hits –
Amar Akbar Anthony, Parvarish, Suhaag, Naseeb, Desh Premee, Coolie and
Mard, with only their last film together Ganga Jamuna Saraswati
failing at the box-office.
In “Suhaag”, Bollywood’s glitterati were paraded
in one of the sequences a la the lead actors and actresses of Bollywood were
paraded at the end sequence of the Bollywood film “Om! Shanti Om” in the song “Deewangi,
Deewangi”.
Towards the end of his career, Desai's previously
successful stories and style began to lose favor with audiences. Critics
accused him of self-parody. His last film as a director
Ganga Jamuna Saraswati and the films
he produced with his son Ketan Desai directing,
Allah Rakha and
Toofan, failed at the box office.
All the star kids did not make it big in filmdom
and Ketan Desai could not fit into the big boot of his dad.
Mr. Prayag Raj, Manmohan Desai’s Asst. Director
in a good number of his films - who was with him from his struggling days - played
a significant role in Manji’s hit films.
Manmohan Desai had a love marriage. He was chasing Jevanprabha Gandhi from his
neighbourhood at Khetwadi for some time and mustered courage to propose to
her. Her family, a Maharashrian middle
class family, after checking his background finally agreed for the marriage.
He got married to Jeevanprabha in 1959.
They had one son, Ketan out of the wedlock. Jeevanrabha
Desai was credited with a number of screen plays of Manmohan Desai films.
When Manji’s wife Jeevan Desai
committed suicide in 1979 that news item in a morning journal found a dejected
me and I was stunned and upset because she was a great human being.
Towards the end of his life Manji was suffering
from chronic back pain which was unbearable.
On 1st March, 1994 that fateful day
when he was leaning on his balcony for support, the balcony collapsed along
with him and met with his death. According
to some section of the press that his death was because of suicide is not
confirmed and debatable.
Manmohan Desai’s funeral was attended by the
dignitaries and almost entire film industry people who mattered.
When we think of Manji and his life, we come to
the conclusion that he believed strongly that his medium of films had three
divine aspects or mantras –
i.e. Entertainment, Entertainment and
Entertainment.
Anhonee Ko Honee Kar Ke……..….Manji left this
world.
R.I.P. - AMEN.
AMAR AKBAR
ANTHONY :
Amar, Akbar, Anthony -
an involved tale of secularism based on the camaraderie between three young
men, a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian - was one of the first set of commercial
Indian films to be broadcast by BBC television during prime time. With its
way-out fantasies, saucy song and dance routines and convoluted plot, Amar,
Akbar, Anthony broke all Indian box-office records. It also established the
career of Amitabh Bachchan, India's most popular actor.
Desai had stumbled upon the idea for Amar
Akbar Anthony from a news item he had read in an evening newspaper. An
alcoholic man named Jackson was fed up with his life and one day he packed his
three children in a car and decided to drop them off in the park. Manmohan
Desai’s story began from where this news item ended.
Desai twisted the story and did away with the
alcohol angle. In the film’s story when the father returns he finds that all
his three children have gone missing. The eldest kid Amar (Vinod Khanna) is adopted
by a Hindu police officer, the second one Anthony (Amitabh Bachchan) by a
Catholic priest and the third one Akbar (Rishi Kapoor) by a Muslim Tailor.
It was the first and last time when Rafi, Lata,
Kishore Kumar and Mukesh sang a song together in the film ‘Hum ko tumse
hogaya pyar kya karein’. There were three different male voices for the
heroes but only Lata Mangeshkar for all the leading ladies.
Amar Akbar Anthony was the only film in
the History of Hindi films which celebrated Silver Jubilee in regular shows 7
cinema Halls in Mumbai and Suburbs.
*- : THE END :-
