Krishan Niranjan Singh

 popularly known as K. N. Singh was the earliest and most prominent actor to do villain roles in hindi cinema much before other villain actors like Pran stepped in to Hindi films . He acted in over 200 films over a long career from 1936 to the late 1980s.
He was born on 1.09.1908 at Dehradoon to Prince and prominent criminal lawyer Chandi Prasad Singh. K.N. Singh was a sportsman and wanted to join army though his father wanted him to become a lawyer like him . However when he saw his father ,as the defence lawyer , saving a known guilty criminal charged with murder ; KN singh decided against the legal profession.
K.N. Singh was a good sportsman particularly in the javelin throw and shot put and was selected to represent India in the 1936 Berlin Olympics but circumstances took him to Calcutta to attend to his ailing sister while her husband ( जीजा ) was away to England for official work . There at calcutta he met his family friend Prithviraj Kapoor who introduced him to director Debaki Bose who in turn offered him a debut role in his film Sunehra Sansar (1936 ) followed by few more movie but he became successful and established in films with his villain ( protagonist) role in film Baagwan ( बागवान gardner ) released in 1938 which became a golden jubilee hit .
From then onwards he acted in several movies in negative ( villain ) roles for a long period up to 1992 though his best roles were in movies of 1950s to 1970s such as
Sikandar (1941), Jwar Bhata (1944) , Humayun (1945), Awara (1951), Jaal (1952), CID (1956), Howrah Bridge (1958), Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi (1958), Amrapali (1966) and An Evening in Paris (1967).
His acted in about 200 films and some of his other prominent films were :-
Manzil (1960)
Barsaat Ki Raat (1960)
Passport (1961)
Mera Saaya (1966 )
Teesri Manzil (1966)
Raat Aur Din (1967)
Mere Huzoor (1968)
Jigri Dost (1969)
Suhana Safar (1970)
Haathi Mere Saathi (1971 )
Dushmun (1971)
Mere Jeevan Saathi (1972)
Do Chor (1972)
Do Bachche Dus Haath (1972) ,
Loafer (1973)
Kachhe Dhaage (1973), Sabak (1973) ,
Keemat (1973) ,
Kala Sona (1975) ,
Adalat (1976)
Dostana (1980) and Laat Saab (1992) .
As opposed to playing a very notorious , angry , greedy and cruel type of common villain role ; he mostly played as a white collared gentleman villain, dressed in a fine suit and smoking a pipe with a calm , cold and slow
delivery of words and dialogues.
His overall suave ( शिष्ट एवं सुशील ) style, medium tone voice and menacing eyes ( Natural threatening and dangerous looking ) were simply legendary .
With advancing age , Singh became less active, particularly from late 1970s onwards.
His stature was such that actors would never turn up late for shooting if they knew that K.N. Singh was on the sets .
KN Singh became completely blind in his last few years and died in Mumbai on 31 January 2000 at an age of 91 and was survived by his adopted son Pushkar ( the son of his brother Bikram ) who is a producer of television serials. He had married Chandravati Singh but they couldn’t produce any children. She passed away earlier than KNSingh in the 1990’s.
The film lovers born after 1940 will not be able to forget KNSingh while they are alive though the current young generation perhaps may not even be knowing KNSingh’s name and his great work profile .

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Four stars