88 Facts You Didn't Know About Dev Anand -- VIII

Here's presenting the eighth batch of the nine-part series of lesser known facts about Bollywood's late star Dev Anand.

Catch the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh parts here.

1. Dev Anand's first meeting with Dr Sreeram Lagoo

Dev Anand and Geeta Bali met with an accident while driving down from Malwan to Mumbai.

Dr Sreeram Lagoo, who was then a doctor at Pune's Sassoon Hospital, was one of the doctors who treated Devsaab.

Apart from Chetan and Vijay Anand, Dev Anand had an elder brother Manmohan Anand, who was an advocate at the Gurdaspur District Court.

Dev Anand was conferred upon the 'Outstanding Contribution to Indian Cinema' award by the current US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in July 2000.

Dev Anand and Suraiya worked together in seven films -- Vidya (1948), Jeet (1949), Shair (1949), Afsar (1950), Nili (1950), Do Sitare (1951) and Sanam (1951), all of which were successful at the box office.

Do Sitare was the last film in which they appeared together.

The only two-hero film Dev Anand acted in was Insaniyat in 1955 with costaring his contemporary Dilip Kumar.

Actresses were just interested in playing his love interest.

Many actresses turned down the role of Jasbir in Hare Ram Hare Krishna before Zeenat Aman was roped in to play the grown-up Jasbir in the film.

Dev Anand's 56-year-old driver Prem Shripath Dubey, who's worked for the late star for 33 years, claims that he's started talking like his late employer.

The first girl he was ever attracted to was Usha Chopra, an Anglo-Indian girl who was an undergraduate student in the same Lahore college Dev Anand was studying in.

While acting in Teen Deviyan, Dev Anand was also ghost-writing and directing the film for his friend Amarjeet, a publicist with Navketan, his home production company.

Incidentally, Amarjeet's Hum Dono was ghost-directed by Vijay Anand.

Jaal was inspired from an Italian film titled Bitter Rice.

Dev Anand had accompanied Guru Dutt to watch the film when the filmmaker proclaimed that he would base his next film on it. Dev Anand was equally inspired by the thought and Dutt cast him in the film opposite Geeta Bali.