A consummate gentleman, doting father, and Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Tom Uncle’, film producer Yash Johar knew all of Bollywood’s secrets. He even left his son Karan Johar a letter on whom to trust in the industry. Although widely known for founding industry giant Dharma Productions in 1976 in Bombay’s Andheri, Yash released only a few superhits during his best years.
He funded the highly ambitious and referenced 1990 movie Agneepath, which didn’t just bring out the grittiest of Amitabh Bachchan but also the grand display of tragedy that was voiced by poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan.
Although some critics have called Agneepath a rip-off of Al Pacino’s Scarface (1983), and despite a modern revised version released in 2012 starring Hrithik Roshan, many worship the movie till this date.
“Agneepath is the fading star’s last hurrah and an apt culmination of the key motifs from the scintillating seventies and its ubiquitous angry young man,” Shaikh Ayaz wrote in The Indian Express. But Bachchan’s last hurrah tanked badly at the box office, and that broke Yash’s heart, Karan later said. Dharma Productions’ bad days had begun.
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Days of Dharma
Most Dharma films failed to get the numbers through the ’80s and much of the ’90s, except for Dostana (1990). “Duplicate should never have been made,” said Karan about the 1998 SRK-starrer.
It was the superhit Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) that revived Dharma Productions. And since then, the trope of drama and romance in grand, upper-class, filthy-rich families lorded over by a patriarch has remained its trademark.
SRK and Amitabh Bachchan, Dharma’s forever star boys, have heaped praises on Yash Johar over the years. In multiple interviews, Shah Rukh has talked about how Johar Sr was like a father figure to him. Industry people even caught on to ‘Tom Uncle’, a moniker that SRK gave Yash. Bachchan called the producer “an institution in himself, a pillar of support, and a guiding force”.
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Through the years
An Arya Samaji with roots in Lahore, Yash and his family migrated to Bombay after Partition like many others and had to start life anew like thousands of others. But he ascended to the top of the showbiz ladder faster than many of his contemporaries.
In 1952, at the age of 23, Yash started out as a part of the production crew at Sunil Dutt’s production house Ajanta Arts. A decade or so later, he shifted to Dev Anand’s Navketan Films and became a part of the production team for the 1965 superhit Guide. It was during this decade when he met Yash Chopra’s sister Hiroo, who he married in 1974. By 1975, the producer had gained some experience to chart his own path — four years later, he founded his production house, and a year after that, Dostana hit the screens.
A day before Yash died of cancer in 2004, he had repeatedly told his wife and son that he didn’t want to go.
“We were a strong unit of three, and it was like one-third of it, the epicentre of that unit, was crumbling,” wrote Johar Jr in his 2016 biography An Unsuitable Boy.
Dharma Productions became a household name for lovers of Bollywood family dramas till the mid-2000s, after which Karan gave his movies a younger, popular culture twist. One aspect has remained constant, though: its traditional approach to filmmaking, and that is where Yash Johar’s auteur self appears. Good values, respect for elders, and gratitude to God are some of the running themes that the banner couldn’t ever shake off.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)