Ashok Kumar, around this time (1951-1960), was hunky-dory, all right, as a parallel performer to Dev Anand. Or to Raj Kapoor. Or to Dilip Kumar. What sustained Ashok Kumar was the fact that this Bombay Talkies Mohican -- enjoying a long solid innings in cinema like Dev Anand was to do -- never ever tried to be 'one up' on any hero.
In fact, Ashok Kumar's counsel to The Triumvirate -- as indeed to other leading men -- was to have "all the fun" they wanted, with the heroine, on the sets, but to make sure to get back to the wife by nightfall! Not for nothing did Basu Chatterji cast Ashok Kumar in the eponymous role of Shaukeen (1982). Ashok Kumar was but playing, in Shaukeen, the sly playboy he was in real life.
Dev Anand, by contrast, shocked the whole nation (tender female hearts in particular) when he wooed and wed Kalpana Kartik on the sets of House No 44 (1955). What a heap of outraged female letters the fan magazines received upon this wedding happening almost behind their backs! The thing they just could not comprehend was how a Screen Adonis like Dev Anand could fall for such a Plain Jane! But Dev had firmly made his choice in the heroine of Baazi, Aandhiyan, Humsafar, House No 44 and Nau Do Gyarah. The last-named film, releasing as Goldie Vijay Anand's 'maiden' in August 1957, came to the screen only after Dev and Kalpana had wed. This only fortified Dev's abiding female fans's belief that Kalpana Kartik could not act for Parle's toffee.
That the marriage was never a success was cold comfort for Dev's boundless female admirers. It is to Dev Anand's credit that not once did he utter a word, in the media, against Kalpana Kartik. He has always believed that marriage is an intensely personal matter. For the rest, he is perhaps the only one, from among the 1950s heroes, candidly to acknowledge that stars are public property.
Also Read: Talk about the Dev-il
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