Mahanayak Uttam Kumar’s birth anniv today

Legendary Bengali film actor Uttam Kumar’s birthday is being observed today.

Uttam Kumar was born as Arun Kumar Chatterjee at his ancestral home in Kolkata on September 3 in 1926.

Uttam Kumar is a versatile genius of his time.  He is admired as the iconic superstar of Bengali cinema of all time. Besides carving a niche in the filmdom; the superstar was a singer, composer, lyricist and director - all at once. Uttam earned fame through producing at least seven films alongside worked as singer, composer and director in another six films during his lifetime.

He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and classic actors of Indian cinema and known as Mahanayak.

Uttam is considered one of the most popular film stars in the history of Indian cinema. He managed to have numerous fans and he mainly concentrated in the regions of Bengal and Bangladesh.

In his lifetime, he was a recipient of a number of awards, including National Film Award for Best Actor. In his honour, a Metro Station was renamed in Kolkata.

His first release was Drishtidan directed by Nitin Bose. He also worked in an earlier unreleased film titled Mayador.

Apart from Bengali, Uttam Kumar also acted in some Hindi films such as ‘Chhoti Si Mulaqat’, ‘Amanush’, ‘Anand Ashram’, ‘Dooriyaan’, ‘Bandie’ and ‘Kitaab’. But his towering contribution was to Bengali cinema and the Bengali film industry on the whole.
From 1947 to 1980, both in Bengali and Hindi, Uttam Kumar acted in 202 films. Of them, 39 were blockbusters, 57 were super hits, 57 made profits above the average and the rest flopped.

Uttam Kumar breathed his last in the Belleveue Clinic in Kolkata on 24 July 1980 at the age of 53.