Opinion There will never be another Dharmendra
Action hero, romantic icon, comic genius, before Amitabh Bachchan's Angry Young Man, there was Dharmendra, who could fight, flirt, and joke -- all in one frame
Actor Dharmendra passes away at 89. (Photo: Express Archives) 
Through his 60-plus rewarding years as an actor and a legendary star, Dharmendra was dubbed “He Man” and “Garam Dharam.” The twin monikers were perfect descriptors for the burly, handsome Jat, whose body of work included every genre of film in Hindi cinema, out-and-out actioners, pensive romances and laugh-out-loud comedies. But to me, his best films were those in which he brought out his Naram Dharam side, his strong frame reflecting a softness, a gentleness, and that unique mix, so rare for his era, made him the complete man, both naram and garam.
It’s hard to choose from his startlingly varied filmography, which included the socially-conscious films by Asit Sen, including Mamta (1966), Bimal Roy and Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Chetan Anand’s Haqeeqat (1964), which remains one of India’s best war films, Raj Khosla’s rumbustious dacoit saga Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971) — raise your hands, those who swung to that song “Maar diya jaye, ya chhod diya jaye” — or Yaadon Ki Baaraat (1973), the Nasir Hussain blockbuster which was the first Hindi multi-starrer. Among his many films with Mukherjee, there is the all-time comic classic Chupke Chupke (1974), but who can forget Bandini (1963), or Anupama (1966)? And, of course, there’s Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay (1975), in which he got top billing as indubitably the biggest star of an all-star ensemble.
When he began, with such films as Shola aur Shabnam (1961), and Soorat aur Seerat (1962), the popular troika of Raj Kapoor-Dev Anand-Dilip Kumar were still in the game. His contemporaries included Rajesh Khanna, Jeetendra, Vinod Khanna, all of whom were in the reckoning when it came to the roles of the heroes who could sing, dance and romance, and kick the villains where it hurt most. The end of the decade saw the entry of Amitabh Bachchan, who rewrote the rules of Hindi cinema so swiftly and suddenly that he became the default choice of all plum projects going forward.
Dharmendra was the only one who stood steadfast in the face of Bachchan’s seismic rise. Rajesh Khanna bowed out swiftly and suddenly, Jeetendra could only carry on with the help of big South films, Vinod Khanna side-stepped, now in, now out of Osho’s Pune ashram. The only star who didn’t go under was Dharmendra, and it is noteworthy that some of Amitabh’s biggest hits had Dharmendra as his co-star; apart from Chupke Chupke and Sholay, in which the latter famously fell in love with Hema Malini, there was also Vijay Anand’s thoroughly enjoyable caper Ram Balram (1981).
That Hema agreed to be his “second wife” was a huge scandal at the time. But it wasn’t a deal-breaker, as far as his-and-her status went: Stars those days had the kind of mystique and leeway that mere mortals didn’t — if Garam Dharam and Dream Girl wanted to live together, it was fine; chalo, said the tabloids, at least he was better than her other suitors, Sanjeev Kumar and Jeetendra. The gossip press, popular precursors to the social-media saturated handles of today, had a field day, but were soon forced into reporting the domestic bliss of Dharmendra and his large family, which handled everything with dignified silence.
In the last couple of decades, Dharmendra continued to work sporadically, starring alongside sons Sunny and Bobby in both iterations of Yamla Pagla Deewana (2011, 2013), whose USP was simply to get all the Deols in the same frame; fans turned up in droves to see their favourite, even if he had visibly aged. That he had a lot more inside him was picked up by a handful of directors. He added immeasurably to Sriram Raghavan’s Johnny Gaddaar (2007) and Anurag Basu’s Life In… a Metro (2007), a Hindi-song-loving crook in the first, and a die-hard romantic in the second. That he could do an ageing lover well was evident in his small role in Karan Johar’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani (2023). Of late, he had been vigorously talking up the forthcoming war-film Ikkis, also by Raghavan, who never stopped being his biggest fanboy.
A self-made star, he forged an enduring career and massive fanbase — one dedicated entirely to the flair with which he wore that skirt in Manmohan Desai’s 1977 rollicking entertainer Dharam Veer — his legacy being carried forward by Sunny and Bobby, currently riding high with huge hits under their belt. Nephew Abhay has some of the most interesting indie-spirited films on his CV; Eesha, his daughter with Hema, had a successful, if brief, stint in the movies, with both mom-and-daughter still visible in product campaigns, all comprising a film family that has made varied contributions to the Indian entertainment space.
But there will never be another Dharmendra, whose immortal line from Johnny Gaddaar, “It is not about the age, it is the mileage” could well be his epitaph.
The writer is film critic, The Indian Express
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