Paidi Jairaj

Paidi Jairaj Biography

Paidi Jairaj was a renowned film actor, director and producer of Indian movies in the era of silent movies and early talkies. He was recipient of Dadasaheb Phalke Award for his lifetime contributions to Indian cinema in 1980. Paidi Jairaj also known as Jayraj or Jai Raj was a close relative of Nightingale of India – Sarojini Naidu. He was one of the earliest action heroes of Indian film industry.  He acted in about 170 movies of which he did Hindu and Urdu was more likely. He has also acted in a few Marathi and Gujarati movies.

Jairaj was born in Hyderabad in the year 1909, September 28. He completed his education from Hyderabad itself. He completed his graduate studies at Nizam College, Hyderabad. It was during this time that he developed a passion in films and left to Mumbai in search of a career in this field. He started his acting career in 1929. His debut movie was a silent film - Star Kling Youth. Then he acted in 11 silent movies of which Triangle of Love, Mathru Bhoomi, All for Lover, Mahasagar Mothi, Flight into Death and My Hero were popular.

With the era of 1930’s, talkies began to conquer silent movies and Paidi continued his success journey in talkies as well. He appeared in Urdu and English movies and became immensely popular. He was ranked as one among the top actors of that time and his time was taken along with leading actors like Shantaram, Prithviraj Kapoor and Motilal of Hindi cinema.  He fully dominated the industry for about 2 decades and was successfully paired with leading actresses like - Shakeela, Sashikala, Nirupa Roy, Shobhana Samarth, Devika Rani, Meena Kumari and Madhuri.

He was most known for his action movies and his popular action movies are Rana Pratap, Amar Singh Rathod, Prithviraj Chauhan, Tippu Sultan, Razia Sultana, Veer Durgadas, Allauddin, Rajputani, Shajahan, Jai Chitod and Rana Hameer.  Most of these stories belong to historic age of Indian civilization.  As a director, his movies are Mala, Pratima, Rajghar, Mohar and Saagar. He was active in the industry till 1995 doing character roles in the past few decades and died on August 11, 2000 in Mumbai.

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Updated: May 14, 2014