Bina Rai
The elegantly beautiful Bina Rai wife of great actor Premnath was a leading actress during 1950s and 1960s and worked in about thirty movies in her short career and almost all of them were critically acclaimed and praised by the audience .
Of her all movies ; films ‘Anarkali’ (1953) in which she played the classic role of Anarkali followed by film Taj Mahal 1963) in which she did the role of Mumtaz Mahal are considered classics and were hit . Her royal and extremely beautiful looks exuding charm and innocence made her the perfect choice for these historical roles and for which she won the Filmfare Award for Best Actress .
She had worked with several leading actors of her time namely Ashok Kumar, Kishore Kumar, Pradeep Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Bharat Bhushan, Shammi Kapoor and her husband – Premnath.
Bina Rai was born in a punjabi hindu family in Lahore as Krishna Sarin on 13.07.1931 . Her father S.R.Sarin was an officer with railways . During partition riots , her family resettled in kanpur . She attended school in Lahore and then attended IT college in Lucknow . She had to go for hunger strike to convince her parents to allow her to act in films .
Bina Rai was a first year student of Arts in 1950, when she saw an advertisement for a talent hunt contest which she contested by going to bombay and won it with two prizes -ist cash award of Rs25000/- and second a leading role in Kishore Sahu’s film Kali Ghata (1951) which became her debut film .
she fell in love with actor Premnath while shooting for film Aurat औरत and they married on 2.9.1952 and set up their own film production company called P.N.Films .
Their first film from P.N. Films was Shagufa (1953) followed by Prisoner of Golconda, Samunder and Watan but the movies were not successful.
However she acted in following successful movies and became a star :-
1955: Insaniyat
1955: Madh Bhare Nain
1955: Marine Drive
1956: Chandrakant
1956: Durgesh Nandini
1956: Hamara Watan
1957: Bandi
1957: Chengiz Khan
1957: Hill Station
1957: Mera Salaam
1957: Sammundar
1957: Talaash
1960: Ghunghat
1963: Taj Mahal
1966: Daadi Maa
1967: Ram Rajya
1968: Apna Ghar
Bina Rai stopped acting by late 1960s claiming that women after a certain age don’t get good roles. She always spoke fondly of her husband Premnath, who had died on 3 November 1992.
Later in life when her parents bought a kothi in hill station – mussorie ; she would visit her home quite regularly as she loved Mussoorie and people of the town would wait for hours on the mall road to get a glimpse of her . The old photo studios of Mussoorie ( now closed ) would proudly display her and her husband premnath’s photos . She was an exquisitely beautiful and a dignified person .
In 2002, their son, Kailash released a tribute album, to his father – Premnath on the occasion of his 10th death anniversary and 86th birth anniversary, titled “Amar Premnath “ released by Saregama. Her grandson, Siddharth Malhotra, directed the successful TV series on doctors named Sanjivani (2004).
She died on 6 December 2009, following a cardiac arrest. She was survived by her two sons, Prem Kishen and Kailash (Monty) and grandchildren Sidharth and Akansha Malhotra .
Audience of her era had great admiration for her acting talent and extraordinary beauty and cinema lovers will remember her for a long time .
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Four stars
