Surendra

Indian actor · 1910–1987

Surendra Nath Sharma took a law degree and then went into films, where Mehboob Khan met him at Sagar Movietone and promoted him as Bombay's answer to K. L. Saigal - a star manufactured on purpose to match another studio's, which is how that system worked. The two men made around nine films together, from Deccan Queen (1936) through Aurat (1940) to Anmol Ghadi and Anokhi Ada (1948). He sings three of the twelve songs here, including Awaaz De Kahan Hai with Noor Jehan, and this is the interesting thing about the film: Surendra is one of the last of the singer-actors, performers who sang their own songs on screen, and the twelfth song of the same score is Mohammed Rafi's, the first of the generation that made that obsolete. The film remembered for starting Rafi is the film in which the older arrangement is still working. Once playback separated the two trades Surendra moved into character parts and kept working into the 1960s. Wikipedia dates the film's release to 11 November 1946, which would make its premiere his thirty-sixth birthday; Cinemaazi dates it to April, so the coincidence is attributed here rather than asserted.