Waheed Murad: The Chocolaty Hero of Pakistan

It has been almost 30 years since the chocolaty hero of Pakistan, Waheed Murad passed away but there are thousands of his fans still out there and they haven't been able to forget him.

Waheed Murad was born on 2nd October, 1938 in Karachi. He was the only son of Nisar Murad, who belonged to a well respected 'Sardar' family. Waheed Murad studied from the most famous school of his times, Marry Colaco School. Did his FSC and BA from from SM Science College and later on completed his MA in English Literature from Karachi University.

Like any other, his parents wanted him to be a doctor or engineer but his father was affiliated with the business of film distribution so Waheed Murad diverted towards acting from the very beginning. He started his practical life by helping his father with the film distribution.

His acting career started in 1959 when he was given a minor role of motor mechanic in the film Saathi. His first complete movie was Aulaad in which actress Neelo acted along him.

In 1960 Waheed Murad started his own business by opening an institute named Film Arts and under the same banner he produced and directed two movies Insaan Badalta hai and Jab se dekha hai tumhain after which he got busy in his acting career.

The first hit movie for Waheed Murad was Heera aur Pathar which he produced himself. In this movie actress Zeba was heroin. The pair was an instant hit and worked together in seven other movies. Later on Zeba got married to the famous hero Muhammad Ali and the pair broke up. At one place where his partnership with Zeba was a success, Waheed Murad had very good relations with Muhammad Ali and they both called each other as brothers. Most of the films in which they worked together, was as brothers.

After the marriage, Waheed Murad, Muhammad Ali and Zeba worked together in 9 movies which were all super hit. Most of the movies celebrated their golden jubilee.

Waheed Murad worked in a total of 125 movies. 115 of them were Urdu, 9 punjabi and 1 was pashto. Out of these 38 were black and white while 87 were colored. In 1966 his movie Armaan was released which was the first platinum jubilee movie of Pakistan and was written by Waheed himself.

He worked with a total of 27 heroines. Waheed Murad was a romantic hero and got involved in the romantic scenes and because of this one of the most famous actresses of Pakistan, Shabnam couldn't work with Waheed Murad. Shabnam's husband Robin Ghosh did not like the fact that Waheed got too frank with his wife so he barred his wife to work with him. He worked with actress Rani in 21 movies which were his most with any heroin.

Later on Waheed resumed making movies under his own institution which were always different from the usual movies in the cinema, he ended up making 13 more movies.

Waheed Murad made his name in an era of great actors and there was no doubt about the fact that he was the most versatile actor of Pakistan. He introduced himself as a stylish hero and that's the reason he was especially famous among women and men used to copy his dressing and hair style.

There were only three movies in which the three super stars of Pakistan acted together. Muhammad Ali, Nadeem and Waheed Murad gave Pakistan film industry three super hit movies and Waheed Murad was the standout even then.

Because of his romantic acting he was named as The King of Romance, Lady killer, SuperStar, Chocolaty Hero, Master of Movies.

Twenty three singers sang for Waheed Murad but Ahmed Rushdi's voice suited Waheed the most, in 66 movies around 147 songs were picturized in Rushdi's voice and there were several hit songs.

One of the greatest actors of all times, Dilip Kumar declared Waheed Murad as the best actor Pakistan ever produced. Another subcontinent great Jatinder said that he wanted to become an actor  because of Waheed Murad. Rajesh Khanna declared him the best actor in Asia after watching his movie Shamma and said that no one can picturize songs better than him.

These are the ways of world that every high has a low and that's what happened with Waheed Murad. Later in the years many film directors stopped casting him because of his high demands and this hurt Waheed Murad a lot. The year 1983 was the worst of his life in which he was first operated, later on he had an accident and he was severely injured, in the same year he had another accident when he hit a pole while trying to save a rickshaw on the road.

After all this misfortune and being rejected, he could not bring himself down to a normal life, he perhaps still wanted a live of stardom and fame but that wasn't the case and he started staying depressed. Worst happened then and his wife left him and took the kids away to America.

Waheed Murad passed away on 23rd November, 1983 at the house of his sister in the worst possible condition. He was buried in the in gulberg Lahore according to his will. In recognition of his services a road was named after him in Karachi.

 This was a sad end to one of the brightest persons in the Pakistan film history.