Bhagwan Dada

Bhagwan Dada was born in 1913 as Bhagwan Abhaji Palav in Amravati , Maharashtra . He was the son of a textile-mill worker who worked in Mumbai textile mills and was obsessed with films. Bhagwan dada hailed from a Marathi family. He worked as a labourer, but dreamt of doing films. He got his break with bit roles in silent films and got totally involved with the studios.

He learned film-making and at one stage used to make low-budget films (in which he arranged for everything including the design of costumes and arranging meals for the cast) for Rs. 65,000. Bhagwan Abhaji Palav, popularly known as Bhagwan dada, mainly due to his love for wrestling, made his debut in the silent era with the film Criminal . He co-directed his first film Bahadur Kisan with Chandrarao Kadam in 1938.

From 1938 to 1949, he directed a string of low-budget stunt and action films that were popular with the working classes. He usually played a naive simpleton. One of the notable films that he made during this period was the Tamil film Vana Mohini (1941) that starred M. K. Radha and Sri Lankan actress Thavamani Devi . In 1942, as part of a scene, he had to slap actress Lalita Pawar hard. He accidentally slapped her too hard, which resulted in facial paralysis and a burst left-eye vein.