Johnny Walker: Things you may not know

'Maalish... tel maalish...' is something which comes to our mind when we hear the name Johnny Walker. He is one of Bollywood's cult comedians. Johnny Walker's death was a huge loss to the industry and the entire nation as well. He ruled millions of hearts with his comic roles and we must say he will continue to rule, as there is no another Johnny Walker in the industry. Here are a few unknown facts about the ace actor, that you may not know....

The name Johnny Walker is not his name since birth. He was named as Badruddin Jamaluddin Kazi. He was christened as Johnny Walker only after he started working in Bollywood. His screen name was taken from Johnny Walker whiskey. This was probably due to his drunkard roles he often played.

Very few may know that Johnny Walker was a bus conductor with the BEST (Bombay Electric Supply and Transport) bus service. He served in BEST for several years till he was spotted by Balraj Sahni. Johnny would often be seen working in the Dadar bus depot. Sometimes he would entertain his passengers with antics that would send them into splits of laughter, and he had an outstanding sense of humour that entertained the people around. Balraj Sahni, who was writing Baazi for Guru Dutt at that time, spotted the actor. Further, Sahni introduced Kazi to Dutt, who was so impressed by Kazi's performance as a drunkard that he immediately wrote a role for him in his directorial film Baazi.

Though Johnny Walker played a hardcore drunkard in films, the irony was that he never had a single drop of alcohol in his entire life, since he was a devout Muslim and a strict teetotaller. Thus, his drunken image was a stark contrast to his real life persona, which was that of a sober and humble soul. Johnny often played a drunkard sidekick in his films and brought smiles and laughter on everyone's face. His antics, husky voice and wacky body language added a flavour to his acting talent.

On his relationship with Guru Dutt, who purposely wrote characters and dialogues for Johnny Walker to make him a part of his films, Johnny had said, "He used to tell me - Here's your scene, your dialogue. If you can do better, go ahead. In every rehearsal I would come up with something new. Guru Dutt used to love that. He used to look at everyone on the sets and see if the light boys, the cameraman, the assistants were laughing at my dialogues. Guru Dutt then had an assistant to write down whatever I said in the rehearsals. That's how we worked."

He met his wife, Noorjahan, on the sets of a film in 1955 and got married even after oppositions from the family. He is the brother of producer Tony Walker and actor Vijay Kumar ( Vahiduddin) who debuted with the 1961 film Wanted. Nasir Khan, one of Johnny's three sons, entered Bollywood and small screen industry and is a well known face. As Johnny was forced to leave his studies while he was in standard sixth, he made sure that he give higher education to each of his kids.

Time changed and the king of comedy, Johnny Walker, was overpowered by Mehmood (another comedy king of Bollywood). In an interview, he had expressed his feelings for the changing scenario of comedy as he stated, "In those days, we used to do clean comedy. We were aware that the person who had come to the cinema had come with his wife and children... The story was the most important thing. Only after selecting a story would Abrar Alvi and Guru Dutt find suitable actors! Now it's all upside down... They line up a big hero and find a story to fit in. The comedian has ceased to be a character, he's become something to fit in between scenes... I opted out because comedy had become hostage to vulgarity. I acted in 300 films and the Censor Board never cut even one line."

He won many awards for his outstanding performance. After serving in the entertainment industry for years and working in more than 300 films, he continued to work even after his downfall and was last seen in Kamal Haasan's film Chachi 420 as a make up artist with a bottle of alcohol. After that, in 2003, it was a curtains down for the legendary actor, but he is still with us through his magnificent work.