Legendary beauty and renowned actress, Nargis epitomized feminine grace and strength on the Hindi film screen. On the occasion of the late actress’s birth anniversary, we relive the highlights of her life…
She was born Fatima Rashid on June 1, 1929, in Calcutta, and made her screen debut as a child artiste in Talash-E-Haq in 1935. Her acting career as a full-fledged heroine began when she was just 14, in Mehboob Khan’s Taqdeer (1943). In a career that spanned two decades, she appeared in many commercially successful as well as critically appreciated films.
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Her pairing with Raj Kapoor achieved legendary status. This duo captured the fascination of the youth in a way no other screen couple had done before. Their style, attitude and dress sense were imitated, their songs hummed, their magic loved.
Nargis starred in many popular Hindi films of the late 1940s and 1950s such as Barsaat (1949), Andaz (1949), Awaara (1951), Deedar (1951), Shree 420 (1955), and Chori Chori (1956). However, she remains immortal for Mehboob Khan's Oscar-nominated rural drama Mother India in 1957. Baburao Patel of the film magazine Filmindia (December 1957) described Mother India as "the greatest picture produced in India" and wrote that no other actress would have been able to perform the role as well as Nargis.
Known for her social work, along with husband Sunil Dutt, Nargis formed the Ajanta Arts Cultural Troupe, which roped in several leading actors and singers of the time and held stage shows at border areas. In the early 1970s, she became the first patron of The Spastics Society of India, and her subsequent work with the organization brought her recognition as a social worker, and later a Rajya Sabha nomination in 1980.
Nargis was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and underwent treatment for the same at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Upon her return to India, her condition deteriorated, and she was admitted to Breach Candy Hospital in Bombay. She went into a coma on 2 May 1981 and died the next day. Less than a week after her death, on 7 May 1981, a seat was kept vacant in her memory at the premiere of her son Sanjay Dutt's debut film Rocky.
