On February 6, 1947, Raj Kapoor launched his first production and directorial debut Aag with a small muhurat and pooja at Eastern Studios in midtown Mumbai. Shooting began after a week and the film was released exactly a year later at Shimla. Its budget was an astronomical Rs 3.5 lakhs, and Raj mortgaged his first car and even borrowed money from his domestic servant Dwarka. The offbeat film starred three leading ladies including Nargis as well as relatives who were into acting and was released by Raj himself after distributors refused to touch it. It did not do too well commercially.

The fifties saw him establish himself as a producer director of great caliber as well as a top actor along with his fellow contemporaries Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand. For more than fifteen years, he remained an evergreen hero of Hindi films. It was Mehboob’s Andaaz (1949) that initiated his rise as a top star, then his own films stabilized the process. Aawara was followed by Shri 420 (1955) about an innocent villager who gets corrupted when he comes to the city to make a living, Anadi (1959), a story on similar lines of a naïve simple hero used by a cruel and corrupt society, Jis Des Mein Ganga Bahti Hai (1960) and Sargam (1964). Chori Chori and Jagte Raho (1956) were his last two film with Nargis as his lead pair. It is widely believed that this lead pair was involved romantically off screen as well.

Raj Kapoor family In 1970, he released one of his most ambitious project ‘Mera Naam Joker’ about the life of a joker in a circus who cried within while making people laugh, outside. He took 6 years to complete the film and although it was brilliant in parts, the film was a failure at the box office. Kapoor was dejected but was back on his tracks with Bobby (1973) a teenage love story introducing Dimple Kapadia and his second son Rishi Kapoor which was a phenomenal success. With Bobby, he began to portray his heroines more sensually in his films. He continued with the trend in films like Satyam Sivam Sundaram (1978) starring Zeenat Aman and Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985) introducing Mandakini. In between he made Prem Rog (1982) taking up a widow’s cause and encouraging remarriage among them. His last film was Henna, an Indo- Pak love story, during the making of which he succumbed to his illness. He had been suffering from Asthma. The film was later completed by his elder son Randhir Kapoor.