He looked middle-aged, somewhat avuncular, from the beginning and since most of his memorable roles were in films that suited his appearance and personality, they ended up being hits. But he managed, remarkably, to look the same almost till his last screen appearance five years ago when he was in his mid-eighties.The gangly Kumar made his d?t in 1934 with a minor role in Jawani ki Hawa (“The Breeze of Youth”) produced by Bombay Talkies – one of India’s first and best-known movie studios – that starred the exquisitely beautiful Bengali actress Devika Rani. But one of Kumar’s directors told him that his prominent jaw would gravely handicap his acting future, news he received with indifference He dreamt not of stardom, but of becoming a film technician. Kumar’s first film, expectedly, sank into oblivion.But, for unknown reasons, the hero billed to star opposite Rani in Jeevan Naiyya (“New Life”, 1936) backed out, and the desperate director implored Kumar to replace him He was terrified. “I knew little about acting and frankly I didn’t want to know,” he reminisced years later.

“The thought that I was to play the hero opposite Devika Rani sent a chill down my spine. She had charisma, she spoke English and interacted with the directors of Bombay Talkies. She virtually controlled the affairs of the company.” Rani was also married to the studio owner Himanshu Rai.At an early stage in the film’s shooting, an edgy Kumar was supposed to jump on the villain at the count of 10. Highly nervous, he jumped before the count ended, landed on the villain’s back and broke his leg. The shooting was stalled for several weeks and the film eventually made no ripples.

But it was enough to have Kumar cast alongside Rani once again. Achyut Kanya (Untouchable Girl), released later the same year, became a runaway box office success, and Kumar’s stardom was assured. The budding cinematographer and unwilling actor had emerged a star.Kumar was born Kumudlal Kunjilal Ganguly – the eldest of the three talented Ganguly brothers, each of whom became a Bollywood legend in his own right – into a middle-class Bengali Brahmin household in 1911 in Bhagalpur, eastern Bihar state. He was schooled locally before graduating in science from Robertson college in Jabalpur, Central India, a small town close to where his father had been transferred as magistrate.At college Kumar developed an obsession for cinematography, but his father, like most parents of his generation, had a strong antipathy to the entertainment world and sent his son to study Law at Calcutta, then capital of the British colonial administration in eastern India.