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Actor Pran, who was billed as one of the greatest villains ever in the history of Indian cinema, once feared that the audience would abuse him if he stepped out in public. Due to his image, which even his daughter wanted him to change, Pran said he thought he would get bashing from the crowd at a public event– but something unexpected happened.
During the ‘Inconversation with Ishan’ podcast, veteran journalist Roshmila Bhattacharya spoke about some of the villains of Hindi films, who were “bad men on screen but proper gentlemen off screen.”
The journalist recalled Pran’s daughter, frustrated with his bad-man image, telling him to do a “good role” for a change. “‘My classmates keep telling me that my father is a villain, so please do a good role for a change,’ she had told him. Around the same time, he signed Manoj Kumar’s Upkar, where he played Malang chacha, who became everyone’s favourite after the film released and became a huge hit,” the journalist said.
Set in the backdrop of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, Upkar was the directorial debut of Manoj Kumar and stared Pran as the noble man Malang, who was the moral compass to Manoj Kumar. His non-villainous turn after years of being synonymous with the bad guy in movies completely win over the audience, as Pran later confessed of being respected perhaps for the first time in his career.
Actor Pran was called ‘villain of the millennium.’ (Express archives)
Roshmila Bhattacharya recalled, “There was an industry person’s wedding, and naturally there was a lot of crowd. The venue was slightly ahead of where the car would drop people, and on both sides, we had onlookers, wanting to meet the stars. Pran saab told me, ‘Mujhe dar lagne laga, ki ye log mujhe gaali dena shuru kar dege (I feared that if I step out, I’d be abused by the crowd due to my image)’”.
“The minute he got down from the car, there was pin-drop silence. Suddenly someone said, ‘Malang chacha is coming!’ The crowd just moved, so that he could walk freely. He said, ‘The respect I received that day… Whatever role you play, a hero, villain, or a character actor, you become that for the audience.’”
The veteran journalist reiterated the legend that Pran’s impact on the audience was so strong that no babies were named after him, as parents feared their newborn would turn out like the on-screen villain. “But he was a pure gentleman,” she added. Pran passed away in 2013, aged 93.
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