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How is Ravi Kapoor now? Have we forgotten him? If you are unable to fathom what we are talking about, Ravi Kapoor is the original name of one of Bollywood’s biggest superstars of all time and the ladies’ heartthrob of his era — Jeetendra!
The man who earned the sobriquet of Jumping Jack in Bollywood owing to his energetic dancing style, turns 78 today. He has chosen to move away from the limelight, but Jeetu — as he was known to fans and colleagues — continues to reside in the hearts of Hindi film buffs across the globe.
Jeetendra’s genial screen image, gentlemanly attitude off the screen and, most notably, those trademark white dancing shoes he insisted on wearing every time, will never go away from popular psyche.
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On his birthday, here’s a throwback on the phenomenon that is Jeetendra..
WHERE IT STARTED
Jeetendra was born on April 7, 1942 in Punjab’s Amritsar as Ravi Kapoor. He schooled at St. Sebastian’s Goan High School and then went to Siddharth College, both in Mumbai.
BOLLYWOOD CALLING
Jeetendra got his Bollywood break in V. Shantaram’s “Navrang”. He would go on to deliver hit films like “Geet Gaya Pattharon Ne (1964), “Farz” (1967), “Caravan” (1971), “Parichay” (1972), “Khushboo” (1975), “Kinara” (1977), “Dharam Veer”, “Judaai” (1980), “Meri Aawaz Suno” (1981), “Himmatwala” (1983), “Khudgarz” (1987) and a lot more, which made him a superstar.
HIT MACHINE
Jeetendra has acted in over 200 movies as the lead, out of which over 120 were hits! This is a ratio very few actors can dream of. His active years were from the ’60s to the ’90s but he actually ruled Bollywood in the ’70s and ’80s. In the seventies, he made a hit pair with top actresses of the era such as Hema Malini, Rekha and Reena Roy. In the eighties, he started off as a hit co-star for Jaya Pradha but he really struck gold once he teamed up with Sridevi in the 1983 superhit, “Himmatwala“. The film that would go on to spiral Sridevi to the top of the Bollywood heroines’ heap, also led to a chain of commercial successes for the Jeetendra-Sridevi pair including “Justice Chaudhary”, “Maqsad”, “Mawaali” and “Tohfa”.
JUMPING JACK
No discussion of Bollywood dancing can be complete without a thorough acknowledgment of Bollywood’s Jumping Jack Jeetendra. Jeetendra’s style was best defined in songs like “Naino mein mapna” (“Himmatwala”), “Taki O Taki” (“Himmatwala”), “Mast bahaaron ka main aashiq” (“Farz”) and “Dhal gaya din” (“Humjoli”), which remain evergreen till today.
STYLE ICON
The evergreen heartthrob who made every girl’s heart skip a beat, has always been a natty dresser. On-screen, he set a fashion trend with his white pants and white shoes. It is said that the actor had randomly picked up the clothes from a shop before shooting for the song “Mast bahaaron ka main aashiq” in “Farz”, which went on to become his trademark style. When quizzed about the same on the sets of a television dance reality show a few years ago, Jeetendra confessed with a smile: “Dark clothes make me look short!”