K.L. Saigal

K.L. Saigal, Kundan Lal Saigal, was the first artist to be considered as the 'Superstar' of Bollywood. He was an exceptionally good singer and an excellent actor. Throughout his career of fifteen years, Kundan Lal Sehgal acted in 36 feature films, twenty-eight Hindi/Urdu, seven Bengali and one Tamil. He has rendered 185 songs in his entire career, which include 142 film songs and 43 non-film songs. The following lines provide the complete biography cum life history of K L Saigal.

K L Saigal was born on 11th April 1904 at Nawa Shahar, Jammu (present day Jammu and Kashmir). Though he had an inertest in music since a very young age, he didn't have the means to pursue it. His humble background forced him to drop out of school and work as a railway timekeeper. Thereafter, he worked as a typewriter salesman and then as a hotel manager. However, during all this time, Kundan Lal Sehgal continued to indulge in his passion for singing. The turning point of K L Saigal's life came in the early 1930s, when B.N. Sircar, the head of 'New Theatres' film studio, hired him.

It was at the 'New Theatres' that Kundan came into contact with famous music composers like R.C. Boral, Pankaj Mullick, K.C. Dey and Pahari Sanyal. He got his first break with the Urdu film Mohabbat Ke Ansoo, which was released in the year 1932. However, the movie did not do well at the box office. In 1933, K L Sehgal sang four bhajans for the film 'Puran Bhagat', which served as his stepping-stone to success and from then onwards, he never looked back in life. In 1935, Saigal played the character of 'Devdas', in the movie of the same name and carved his niche as an actor also.

Kundan Lal Saigal also acted in a number of Bengali movies, produced by New Theatres. In the Hindi film, Street Singer, Saigal sang the song 'Babul Mora' live, even though playback singing had become the preferred mode by then. In the year 1941, Kundan Lal Saigal moved to Bombay to work with Ranjit Movietone. Bhakt Surdas (1942) and Tansen (1943) were some of the popular movies of this time. Slowly, alcohol became a principal factor of Saigal's life and it started affecting his work as well as his health. Saigal died in his ancestral city of Jalandhar on 18th January 1947, at the age of 42.