The Hindi film industry lost one of its biggest legends on Monday morning as Dharmendra bid farewell due to age related issues. He was 89 and approaching his 90th birthday and saw a career which spanned 65 years as his first film Dil Bhi Tera Hum Bhi Tera released in November 1960.
The greatness of Dharmendra was that it was insane stardom without the noise and thats a rarity for someone who saw such heights of popularity which probably no one or very few saw. There was a humbleness about the stardom and the public probably saw this honesty and glow on his face also to make him their favourite. There are so many of his films which actually were not good enough to be HITS but they were as the public just wanted to see Dharmendra especially when these films went down into the smaller centres. The reach of the man was phenomenal.
Today everybody knows in the industry that the noise is such that its far louder than the achievements but here was a man who had that self respect and could never go to PR to push his achievements and there were many one after the other. Dharmendra dominated the 70's but there were no tags of megastar or superstar but the public never cares for these tags.
The 70's was dominated by multistarrers and Dharmendra did many of them but when he was in them it could be clearly be seen he was leading them no matter who the other actor was so no tag was needed as the far as the public was concerned which made him the peoples favourite. He was the biggest star ever seen in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, UP, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh and unless some miracle comes along will remain the biggest forever. Today you have tags like India's biggest superstar or India's biggest star but before India which states do these superstars rule.
The early eighties did see some films not doing well probably because as he got into his son Sunny Deol's launch vehicle Betaab and the concentration was fully on that but Dharmendra was Dharmendra and the initials were still huge and post Betaab he signed better films and most of them came out in 1987 and it was HIT after HIT.
The early nineties when the stardom was on the wane there were 40-60 different Dharmendra films playing in cinemas across the country. This did not happen once but in quite a few weeks in that 1989-1993 period. This has not happened with anyone else and also will never happen again. The affection of the public remained even if the quality of movies had gone down.
The box office records were aplenty and the HIT list is bigger than anyone else but its not the time to go into that as the biggest takeaway from a legendary career is how to be in the top echelons of all time and remain there with a humbleness and even an embarrassment when praised and and without creating noise around your stardom. The screen image was huge but here there was also a huge real life personality unaffected by the mega success and changing times within the industry over the decades. An actor like this will not come again.
Slowly these legends who made the Hindi film industry what it is are passing away. Obviously the industry is not the same Hindi film industry anymore as its called by a name which is actually in a way a profanity given by the west and maybe it even this deserves this name today but just for these legends who gave so much you hope it can get back to its roots one day and become the Hindi film industry again.
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