Dharmendra, the superstar who balanced rugged charm with rare tenderness

From Phool Aur Patthar to Sholay and beyond, Dharmendra carved a career marked by irresistible charm, disarming humanity, and a rare ability to blend rugged heroism with emotional vulnerability

An elderly woman shivers in the cold. Shakti Singh alias Shaka, a criminal, spots her. The young man takes off his shirt and covers her to protect her from the elements. The act of kindness at the heart of a brief sequence in O.P. Ralhan’s Phool Aur Patthar, the 1966 film that catapulted Dharmendra to superstardom, became the cornerstone of the masculinity that the actor would embody – bulked-up but benign, solid but soft.      

 

Dharmendra’s onscreen persona contained contradictions that defied definitions. Alternating between the irrepressible and the vulnerable, the smouldering and the subdued, the handsome actor could charm a bird out of a tree.

 

Many a Hindi blockbuster, be it an action film, a heist thriller, a war movie, a social drama or a comedy, rode on his broad shoulders all through the 1970s and 1980s. He was never hemmed in by genres or forms. 

 

Dharmendra floated freely across diverse creative credos. He was as much at home with Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Rajinder Singh Bedi (who directed him in 1973’s Phagun) as he was with Prakash Mehra (Samadhi), Manmohan Desai (Dharam Veer) and Nasir Hussain (Yaadon Ki Baarat).    

 

In a career that lasted more than six decades – his final film, Sriram Raghavan’s war drama Ikkis, is scheduled for release on December 25 – he went from macho to malleable, from rugged to romantic, from playful to profound and from pulpy to philosophical across a variety of movies that collectively scripted a sustained success story that was second to none.        

 

Dharmendra’s popularity was indeed enormous. It survived the onslaughts of two megastars who arrived on the scene after the Punjab-born actor had, by the mid-1960s, established himself as one of the most bankable stars of the Hindi movie industry.  

 

Rajesh Khanna hit the big time in 1969, delivering two massive hits, Aradhana and Do Raaste, in a single year. Many of the male stars of the era fell by the wayside. But not so Dharmendra. 

 

He continued to go from strength to strength, making his presence felt in an array of films – from gentle melodramas directed by Asit Sen and Hrishikesh Mukherjee to crowd-pleasing potboilers helmed by Arjun Hingorani, who launched the actor in Dil Bhi Tera Hum Bhi Tere (1960) and then, in the 1970s, cast him in every single film that he made. 

 

The mid-1970s saw Amitabh Bachchan zoom to the top with Zanjeer and Deewaar. The angry young man threatened to put all other male stars in the shade. Yet again, the Dharmendra stood firm. His aura wasn’t dented one bit. 

 

In fact, the actor joined forces with Bachchan in two of 1975’s biggest hits, Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay and Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Chupke Chupke, two films that were polar opposites.           

 

His pairing with Hema Malini, who was to become his second wife in 1980, is the stuff of legend, but the diversity of Dharmendra’s oeuvre was so phenomenal that there was never a phase in his professional life when he was in danger of falling into a rut, in terms of either the kind of films he starred in or the sort of co-actors he worked with. 

 

He was a true-blue movie star who needed no easy demarcations in order to be identified. Until Phool Aur Patthar turned out to be a major milestone in his career, Dharmendra was not exactly out in the wilderness. He had already worked with Bimal Roy (Bandini) and Chetan Anand (Haqeeqat).

 

In the 1964 film Aayee Milan Ki Bela, starring Rajendra Kumar and Saira Banu, Dharmendra played a negative role. The outcome was positive – with his strong screen presence, he upstaged the male lead.  

 

The year that Phool Aur Patthar, co-starring Meena Kumari, hit the screen, Dharmendra had two other memorable releases – Asit Sen’s Mamta, with Suchitra Sen and Ashok Kumar, and Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anupama, with Sharmila Tagore. 

 

Before the end of the decade, he delivered what ranks among his best screen performances ever as an idealistic young man in Satyakam, featuring Sharmila and directed by Mukherjee. 

 

In the 197os, his career soared into the stratosphere with films like Raj Khosla’s Mera Gaon Mera Desh, which cemented his action star credentials, and Ramesh Sippy’s Seeta Aur Geeta. 

 

The power that the star wielded over the masses was recognized by Hrishikesh Mukherjee in Guddi (1971), in which debutante Jaya Bhaduri played a middle-class girl obsessed with matinee idol Dharmendra. 

 

As if on cue, Dharmendra delivered an uninterrupted string of hits in 1972 and 1973, beginning with Seeta Aur Geeta and Raja Jani and culminating with an unprecedented bunch of money-spinners – Loafer, Jugnu, Jheel Ke Us Paar, Blackmail and Yaadon Ki Baaraat (all 1973). 

 

He played lead roles right until the late 1980s before turning to essaying supporting characters. In 2023, he was in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani and in 2024 in Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya. He was a star who never faded away – and probably never will.     

The writer is a New Delhi-based film critic