Shashi Kapoor: The Eternal Prince Charming

To me, he will always personify good looks and charm. They say charm is something you either have or you don’t – it can’t be cultivated. He had oodles of it – both charm and good looks, and given his bloodline, he was born a star.

  

Born to Prithviraj Kapoor and Ramsarni Devi on this day in 1938, Balbir Raj Kapoor (his real name), inherited theatre and an inborn talent for all things stage. His father was a pioneering stalwart of the Indian stage and Hindi films, who owned a travelling theatre company, Prithvi Theatres that he founded in 1944.  He had three sons and three daughters. Shashi was the youngest of his three sons, the two elder ones being Raj and Shammi Kapoor.  There was a lot of age difference between Raj Kapoor and Shashi and the latter was literally the baby of the family.

The boys with ma and papa 

Shashi was already appearing on stage from the time he was four. In the 1940s, he faced the camera as a child artist in 4 films. In three of these, (Aag, Awaara and Sangam) he played his older brother Raj Kapoor in childhood and in one, titled “Sangram,” he played the young Ashok Kumar. 

As a child artist in Awaara

By 1956, when he was 18, he was both actor and an assistant stage manager for his father’s Prithvi Theatre.  When you are a Kapoor, you practically live and breathe the stage. That year, they were performing in Kolkata (then Calcutta), alongside “Shakespearana,” a British travelling theatre company, owned by Geoffrey Kendal. According to his eldest son Kunal Kapoor, “Dad peeped from behind the curtains to gauge the crowd when his glance fell on Mum”, Geoffrey Kendal’s elder daughter, Jennifer Kendal, sitting in the audience.  

 

Shashi with Jennifer

                                                          

Cupid struck. Shashi made enquiries and found out, much to his pleasant surprise, that she was his counterpart for Shakespearana, playing the lead and being stage manager for her father.  He lost no time in getting introduced. They began courting and in 1958, they married in an Indian-style wedding with many misgivings on the part of both their families.  

The family: Kunal (far right) Sanjana (centre) and Karan (right)

                                            

Despite her being the first foreign daughter-in-law in the family and five years his senior, the marriage endured until her death from cancer in 1984.  They had three children together, two sons, Kunal and Karan and a daughter, Sanjana. He was heart-broken when she passed away, going into a depression that he never quite recovered from.

 

She proved to be his inspiration and no doubt, we owe a lot to her for Shashi becoming a collaborator with Merchant-Ivory Productions (The Householder, Shakespeare Wallah, Bombay Talkie, Heat and Dust, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, A Matter of Innocence, and Side Streets) and putting India on the map of international cinema.  He was the first Indian actor to work extensively in British and Hollywood films. In 1988, he acted opposite Pierce Brosnan in The Deceivers and even played a role in the TV series based on Gulliver’s Travels.  

With Hayley Mills in A Matter of Innocence

                                             

With sis-in-law Felicity in Shakespearewallah

                                    

With Leela Naidu in The Householder 

                                                  

At the 90^th Oscar Awards held in 2018, Hollywood paid tribute to Shashi Kapoor in the Memoriam montage reserved for artists that the film industry has lost the previous year.   

 

In Memoriam: Hollywood pays tribute to Shashi 

In mainstream Hindi films, Shashi debuted as a leading man in Yash Chopra’s 1961 film, Dharmaputra, and as they say there was no looking back. He reigned the box-office right through to the 80s with several hits up his sleeve such as, Jab Jab Phool Khile, Sharmilee, Janwar aur Insaan, Waqt, Aamne Saamne, Abhinetri,  Kanyadaan, Pyaar ka Mausam, Chori Mera Kaam, Chor Machaye Shor, Aa Gale Lag Jaa, Suhag, Aap Beeti, Shaan, Do aur Do Paanch, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Trishul, Kabhi Kabhi, Basera, Fakira, Deewar, Namak Halal, Silsila to name just a handful.

Mere paas ma hai: Iconic scene in Deewar

Jab tak ek bhai bol raha hai, tab
tak ek bhai bol raha hai: Also from Deewar

His co-star, Shabana Azmi, one of India’s leading film actors of global renown, puts in words the ardent admiration he inspired amongst his female fans. “I must have been in my early 20s, just out of the FTII and hoping to make it big in films. Shashiji was already an established star of several years standing and the reigning heart-throb. One day, Zarina and I (Zarina Wahab, her classmate from the FTII and close friend, later a leading Hindi movie star of the 70s and 80s) were just chilling out at home, when the doorbell rang. I answered and who should it be but Shashi Kapoor, standing at the doorstep. The blood just froze in my veins,” she recalls. On seeing her reaction, Shashi flashed his famous smile and asked her if her father (the great poet, Kaifi Azmi who also wrote lyrics for films) was at home. He had to repeat the question several times for it to make sense to Shabana. Somehow she collected her wits enough to ask him inside, and then it was Zarina’s turn to gawk helplessly and get tongue-tied. Shashi graciously made some small talk, of which the shell-shocked girls have no memory whatsoever.  There was a covered glass of water on the table from which he politely took a sip. He left five minutes later, promising to call Kaifi saab later. Hardly was he out of the front door when both Zarina and she made a wild lunge for the glass of water he had left behind on the table. Zarina beat her to it and gulped the water at one go. Neither of them spoke for the next five minutes, with Shabana just wordlessly staring at the chair he had sat on. And then when they found their tongues, they could speak of nothing but him for the next two days.  Such was his charm that the memory of the visit, 40 years later, is still enough to make both of them go weak in the knees.  “He was so gorgeous, so elegant.  And that smile………..you could have felled us with a feather,” she laughs.

 

She also encapsulates for us the mark he left on the Indian theatre and film industry as a whole.  Shashi Kapoor occupied the highest-paid actors slot throughout his stint at the top. “He is the only top filmstar who ploughed all the money he made, not into real estate or other money-spinning businesses either in India or abroad, but into films and the theatre.”  Even at the height of his career, he turned a producer. His banner “Filmvalas” produced such critically-acclaimed films as Junoon (Filmfare/National award for Best Feature Film), Kalyug (Filmfare award for Best Film of the Year); 36, Chowringhee Lane, Vijeta and Utsav. He won the National Best Actor award for New Delhi Times, and a special mention Jury award for his role in In Custody, not to mention the Dadasaheb Phalke Award and the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award.   

Behind the scenes: Shooting Kalyug

In a still from Junoon

 In New Delhi Times

Receiving the Dadasaheb Phalke Award

His leading ladies congratulate him on receiving the award

But perhaps, his greatest contribution to Indian performing arts has been the Prithvi Theatre that he constructed at the site of his parents’ old house in Juhu, Mumbai. Now 43 years old, it is perhaps the finest performing stages in India today, an iconic cultural landmark of the city.

The legendary Prithvi Theatre at Juhu

Posing outside the theatre

                                                     

His children, son Kunal and daughter, Sanjana have played a major role in keeping the theatre going through thick and thin.  Actors such as Vidya Balan and Varun Dhawan have attended workshops here in their formative years, and Zohra Sehgal, Anupam Kher, Pankaj Kapoor, and Annu Kapoor have performed here. Naseeruddin Shah regards performing here as ‘coming home.’ Anurag Kashyap even lived in one of the sheds behind for some time when he first came to Mumbai and had nowhere to go.

Zohra Sehgal with Prithviraj Kapoor in its travelling drama company days

                                            

Zohra Sehgal performing at the Prithvi Theatre in Juhu

Naseeruddin Shah performing at Prithvi

As Kunal says, "We stage around 550 performances a year, most of them loss-making propositions, but it's a family heirloom, a legacy, that both of us are immensely possessive and proud to carry forward. To us, it speaks of Mum and Dad, and what they stood for."

                                                                         

 Kunal and Sanjana Kapoor outside Prithvi

                                                                                        

And that is Shashi Kapoor, a living testament to the saying "Handsome is as handsome does."

How could we end this post without inserting videos of some of our favourite Shashi Kapoor songs?(Shabana is so right, his smile is irresistible!)

And here is the last word --

And the story goes on.................................

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