This reporter stumbled upon an old article in the Sunday Express on veteran actor Danny Denzongpa, last seen in the 2010 “Endhiran”/“Robot.”

His famous quote, of course, was “If I had done ‘Sholay,’ we would have missed a fantastic actor in Amjad Khan.” 

The actor, who hails from Sikkim and is a graduate from the Film and Television Institute of India, made his debut 40 years ago in Gulzar’s “Mere Apne,” and hit big time with B.R. Chopra’s 1973 “Dhund.” Subsequently, he has been loved in films like “Khuda Gawah,” “Love Story,” “Kaala Sona,” and many other films. His iconic roles also include “Fakira,” (for the first time, a man with his kind of features played brother to a top hero like Shashi Kapoor), “Aitbaar” and “Agneepath,” whose Kancha Cheena character has been reprised by Sanjay Dutt in its forthcoming remake. 

Danny, since almost that entire period, had certain preconditions to work. He never worked double-shifts (shooting for two films on any day), on Sundays, or in summer! He shot only outdoors in October.

It all started when he signed a mind-boggling 48 films after “Dhund,” and was working from 7 a.m. to late night. He had just time to take his girlfriend to a disco and sleep for a couple of hours. This led to a collapse with a liver infection and three months in bed! After this, he returned the signing amounts for 42 films and began working like a human being rather than a machine. For over three decades, he has just done two films a year.

Danny also began singing by recording “Mera Naam Aao” for “Yeh Gulistan Hamara” under S.D. Burman. In those days of live recordings, this was a duet with Lata Mangeshkar with Danny singing for Johnny Walker. 

His subsequent songs were filmed on himself but he had one solo in Bappi Lahiri’s “Lahu Ke Do Rang” and duets with Asha Bhosle (“Kaala Sona,” his only popular song as a voice for himself), Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar (both in “Naya Daur”) and all under R.D. Burman. Incidentally, “Lahu…” and “Naya Daur” were both directed by Mahesh Bhatt.

Interestingly, Danny stopped singing on screen because of Laxmikant-Pyarelal. Laxmikant was reluctant and kept making excuses that things were not working right with the music, tabla etc. In disgust, he decided never to sing in films again. At a guess, the song was the one from “Kali Ghata,” in which Mohammed Rafi sang for him. L-P, having conceived a song for their favorite singer, may not have relished the idea of Danny singing it! Earlier they had used Kishore Kumar for him in the tepidly-popular “Woh Mere Peeche” from “Ponga Pandit.”

Danny’s dream was to join the Army and he had been chosen the Best Cadet from the Bengal National Cadet Corps. He was also a bioscience graduate and wished to join the Armed Forces Medical College, but his mother refused to let him have any connection with the Army after the 1962 Indo-Chinese war.

Today, however, acting is incidental. Although he is in post-production on “Jaan Ki Baazi” and his acclaimed parallel release “Frozen,” will soon be released in theaters, his bread and butter come from the three breweries he owns in Sikkim. And yes, it was FTII batch-mate Jaya Bachchan who christened him “Danny” to make his tongue-twister name Tshering Phintso Denzongpa “easy”!