Kidar Sharma

'Kidar Sharma', whose birth name is Kidar Nath Sharma, born on April 20, 1920 was a film producer, director, lyricist, actor, and screenwriter of Indian nationality. He was born into a very poor family in Narowal, Punjab, Pakistan. He had three brothers and two sisters. However, two of his brothers named Vishwa and Ragunath, and one sister Taro died at a young age due to different diseases.

The last of them, Himmat Rai Sharma, became a renowned Urdu poet. Kidar studied at Baij Nath High School, Amritsar. From his school days, he was a creative child and would take a keen interest in photography, philosophy, painting, and poetry. After passing out from Baij Nath High School, he ran away from his family and came to Mumbai with the intention of finding work in the Hindi Film Industry.

Unfortunately, even after a lot of struggle, he couldn't manage to bag any substantial opportunity and returned to his native place. He then resumed his education at Hindu Sabha College. While studying there, he found a Dramatic Society and would star in a lot of its plays. A local Temperance movement's head watched him perform and offered him a chance to work as a producer on one of his silent movie.

It depicted all the shortcomings of alcohol. Kidar used the money that he earned through for this motion picture on completing his English Master's education from Khalsa College, Amritsar. He then joined a theatre group.

In 1932, he got married and subsequently took to painting to make a decent living. A year later, he saw Debaki Bose's directorial Puran Bhagat and shifted to Calcutta to work in New Theatres Studios where Debaki worked. But he wasn't even able to meet him. After several months, he met Prithviraj Kapoor, who was a relatively unknown name then. Kapoor introduced him to Kundan Lal Saigal, who was also struggling at that time and was also his neighbor, who in turn helped Kidar meet Debaki.

Debaki gave him his first job as his movie Seeta's still photographer and later as a screen and poster painter for Inquilab. He worked on several projects after that but achieved fame, in 1936, after writing dialogues for the adaptation of the original Devdas. After the success of Devdas, he veered towards directing and was a part of many projects like Chitralekha, Tumhair Jeet, Neel Kamal, Duniya Ek Sarai, among others. He was also the Children's Film Society's chief director. He was also a talented poet. ‘The One and Lonely Kidar Sharma’ is his autobiography.