Geeta Dutt was a prominent Indian playback singer and a famous Hindi and Bengali classical artist, born in Faridpur before the Partition of India. She found particular prominence as a playback singer in Hindi cinema. She also sang many modern Bengali songs, both in the film and non-film genre.
Early life
Geeta Ghosh Roy Chowdhuri was one of 10 children born to a wealthy Zamindar family in a village named Idilpur, Madaripur Subdivision, formerly under Faridpur district in Bengal, British India. Her family moved to Calcutta and Assam in the early forties, leaving behind their land and properties. In 1942, her parents moved to an apartment in Bombay. Geeta was twelve and continued her schooling at the Bengali High School.
Singing career
K. Hanuman Prasad took Geeta under his patronage, trained and groomed her in singing and later launched her into singing for movies. In 1946, she got the first break with an opportunity to sing in the mythological film Bhakta Prahlad for which Prasad was the music director. She was given two lines to sing for two songs. She was sixteen at that time.
Personal life
During Geeta's recording of songs for the movie Baazi, she met its young up-and-coming director, Guru Dutt. Their romance culminated in marriage on 26 May 1953. Together they had three children: Tarun, Arun and Nina. She also cut a number Non-film discs, singing to the tune of notable music directors like Sudhin Dasgupta and Anal Chatterjee. In 1957, Guru Dutt launched the film Gauri with Geeta Dutt as its singing star. It was to be India's first movie in cinemascope but the project was shelved after just a few days of the shooting. By then, Guru Dutt had got romantically involved with Waheeda Rehman and Geeta had taken to drinking. The break up of their marriage affected Geeta's singing career. In 1958, S.D. Burman had developed discord with Lata Mangeshkar as a playback singer and he attempted to work with Geeta as the main singer of his compositions rather than the upcoming Asha Bhosle who, he felt, was relatively raw. However, out of her personal problems, Geeta would not practice her art sufficiently and failed to meet Burman's demanding standards. He and O.P. Nayyar then started to work with Asha and helped her blossom as a singer. In 1964, Guru Dutt died from a combination of alcohol and an overdose of sleeping pills. Geeta then suffered a serious nervous breakdown and ran into financial problems. She tried to resume her singing career, cutting discs at Durgā Pujā and giving stage shows. She performed a leading role in a Bengali movie, Badhu Baran, and sang admirably in Anubhav, which was her final performance to the music of Kanu Roy.
She is supposed to have sung over 1200 songs in Hindi films. In addition, she has sung songs in many Indian regional languages including Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Maithili, Bhojpuri and Punjabi. She has sung in Nepali evergreen movie Maitighar. Some of the songs sung under S. D. Burman's direction:
