Raj Kapoor

Raj Kapoor (1924-1988), Indian film star, director, and producer. Born in Peshawar (now in Pakistan), the son of the highly respected stage and film actor Prithviraj Kapoor, Raj Kapoor was involved with the cinema from an early age. Starting out as a “clapper boy” at the Bombay Talkies studios, he was soon given the chance to act and, with his good looks and easy-going manner, he rapidly became a screen idol. He set up his own studios, R. K. Films, in 1948.

Kapoor's early films focused on sentimentalized social themes and introduced the glamorous actress Nargis, with whom he formed a highly successful screen partnership lasting over a decade. Kapoor became known and loved as the Chaplin-like sensitive tramp character with a heart of gold. In Awara (1951; The Vagabond), he starred as the lost son of a judge who, after being jailed for stealing bread, takes to a life of petty crime and falls, unknowingly, for his father's beautiful ward, a young lawyer, played by Nargis. The film ends with recognition, reunion, and a courtroom scene in which Kapoor speaks out for the criminals created by a harsh society. Aided by a good musical score, the film proved an enormous success, not only in India, but in the Middle East, where it broke box-office records, and the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), where Kapoor and Nargis found themselves fêted as major celebrities on their visit in 1956. A second film also popular in the USSR was Shri 420 (1955; Mister 420), about a man who specialized in fraud (Section 420 of the Indian penal code, hence the name).

Kapoor's first colour feature was Sangam (1964), a lush, overlong tale about a love triangle. His later films became more lavish still, such as the highly successful Bobby (1973), and sexually explicit, for example, Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978), coupling eroticism with a religious theme.

Kapoor remained a dominant figure in Indian cinema to the end of his life. His brother, Shashi Kapoor, is a successful actor in his own right, and his son Rishi Kapoor and other members of the family have kept up the tradition.