Once mistaken for a cab driver, this celebrity eventually turned out to be the cause of the cabs’ departure from Mumbai’s streets

We’ve all seen the celebrity of celebrities like Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, and Shah Rukh Khan, whose adoring followers queue outside their homes to get a sight of them. But there was another celebrity who was unrivaled in stardom before them.

The actor in question won over all women as ardent fans thanks to his remarkable acting abilities and captivating on-screen persona. Indeed, at one point he was the reason cabs on Mumbai’s streets vanished. There’s no one else like Dev Anand.

The celebrity was misidentified as a taxi driver by a foreigner during the filming of Taxi Driver, which was produced on a shoestring budget because of the financial strain of two box office failures, Aandhiyan and Humsafar. One of Dev Anand’s close friends, Churiwala, told the Mumbai Mirror that Dev was misidentified as a real taxi driver when he pulled up outside the Taj Mahal Hotel to pick up Sheila Ramani, who plays club dancer Sylvie. “A foreigner jumped in and directed Dev saab to take him to the red light area,” Churiwala said. It took our hero a few minutes to persuade him that they were filming a movie in which the contrite man was going to be let go.

But after its premiere, the movie was blamed for the taxis’ disappearance from Mumbai’s streets. According to Dev Anand’s book, all of the taxi drivers and the union officials who supported them parked their cabs outside of a well-known movie theater to see his picture Taxi Driver together when it was first shown in theaters. As a result, Mumbai’s streets were devoid of cabs that evening.

The youngest Anand, Vijay, affectionately known as Goldie, directed the movie while still a student at St. Xavier’s College. Uma, the wife of Chetan Anand, provided editing. In the 1950s musical romance Taxi Driver, Johnny Walker, Anand and Kalpana Kartik, and other notable actors played important parts. The main performers of the film, which was directed by Chetan Anand, secretly married during lunch break after falling in love with one another during the film’s production.