कन्हैयालाल चतुर्वेदी

Kanhaiyalal Chaturvedi (1910–1982) is best remembered today as one of Hindi cinema's great character actors, but he entered films as a writer and lyricist. Born in Varanasi to Pandit Bhairodutt Choube, proprietor of the city's Sanatan Dharm Natak Samaj theatre company, he followed his elder brother, silent-era actor Sankatha Prasad, to Bombay intending to write and direct. At Sagar Movietone he wrote the dialogues and lyrics for Sadhana (1939), and in 1941 he penned songs for films including Kasauti — where his lyrics, set to Ashok Ghosh's music, sat alongside those of Neelkanth Tiwari — as well as Nirdosh and Radhika, with credits such as 'Gulnaro Me Radha Pyari Base', 'Mat Ja Tu Matwali Tu Mat Ja' and 'Pyari Aaj Ki Raat'. Acting, however, soon overtook writing. His portrayal of Sukhilala, the scheming moneylender of Mehboob Khan's Aurat (1940), became iconic, and when Mehboob remade the film as Mother India (1957), Kanhaiyalal reprised the same role seventeen years later — a first in Hindi cinema. Typecast thereafter as tyrannical zamindars, crafty sahukaars and parasitical munims in films like Ganga Jumna (1961) and Upkar (1967), he appeared in over 120 films across a career spanning 1938 to 1982. His early stint as a lyricist remains a little-known chapter of a long and distinctive filmography.