Every time I met Dev Anand, I wondered what the alchemy of stardom was. What are its constituent parts? Charm, intelligence, drive and a childlike optimism — these he possessed in spades. He also had an elephantine memory. The last time we met, in the cluttered study of his home in Mumbai, for a television recording on the publication of his autobiography in 2007, he displayed, for an 85-year-old, an astonishing memory for detail. Of the incandescently beautiful and tragic Madhubala he remembered that she suffered from bad acne (“she needed double slaps of makeup”) and was an incorrigible giggler (“once she started she couldn’t stop, holding up the shot for ages”). But incurable romantic that he was, his eyes turned dreamy and voice fell to a whisper. “Oh, Madhubala,” he sighed into the camera, as if he had just stepped off the sets with her. “She was divine, divine ... just divine!”
It was difficult to determine how much of his charm was put on, part of a persona that was 90 per cent performance. Were his excellent manners also part of stagecraft? Almost every journalist will confirm that he was one of the few stars who took and returned calls himself (“Dev Anand here,” went the crisp introduction). Though I met him perhaps a dozen times, between the filming of Ishq Ishq Ishq in Nepal in 1973 and our last encounter, his unfailing courtesy floored me. Was his unflagging interest a case of brilliantly-executed, never-say-die PR?
An Indian friend of mine in the fashion business in Paris once ran into him at a dinner party in that seductive capital. Dev Anand’s built-in radar swiftly scanned any room for attractive, personable young women — it was not for nothing that his co-stars include the longest roll call of four generations of actresses, from the splendid Durga Khote and Waheeda Rahman to steamy Zeenat Aman, kittenish Tina Munim and many others. He asked her if she would take him round; she was only too flattered. Next day, they visited Galeries Lafayette, the Invalides and the Tuileries gardens. “Did he make a pass? Did he pounce?” I asked when she described their outing. “Not at all,” she replied. “He was funny, clever and the perfect gentleman. He barely finished his glass of wine at lunch. It was better than being squired by Maurice Chevalier.”
Although in many of his famous hits (Hum Dono, Guide, etc) Dev Anand is seen puffing away or drowning his sorrows in drink, in real life he was famously abstemious, rigorously disciplined and punctual — a mark of his longevity. Come rain or shine, he was at the studios at 9 am sharp — one reason he built up his film company Navketan, founded in 1949, into a formidably successful production house.
Unlike stars who often hide or reinvent their modest origins, Dev Anand was fiercely proud of his past as the son of a small-town lawyer in Punjab. In his memoirs he touchingly describes his temporary rift from his father, citing two causes: his father’s inability to pay for his master’s degree – that forced the young Dev to board the Frontier Mail to Bombay with ~ 30 rupees in his pocket – and his criticism over his secret marriage to his co-star Kalpana Kartik, who was Christian.
He adored his two brothers, Chetan and Vijay (Goldie) Anand, and harnessed their creative talents. But in the end he outshone and outlasted them both: there could only be one star in the family, one larger-than-life presence on screen. If you watch the last successful phase of his films, you will see how the camera moves away from all else to concentrate on his image.
Vanity is a key ingredient of stardom’s alchemy, and Dev Anand’s self-love was at the core of his appeal. I asked him if, at his age and after his string of flops, he considered hanging up his boots. His look of withering dismissal at my question spoke louder than his words.
