India, April 25 -- The highest-paid actors in the country today are the biggest superstars - the men (almost always) with the power to draw the masses. Names like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Prabhas, Rajinikanth, Vijay, and Allu Arjun charge over Rs.150 crore per film routinely. These are the heroes of mass actioners, the genre that gets the most traction at the box office, justifying their large salaries. So, it would be hard to imagine a time when a comedian was the highest-paid actor in India.

Although he started as a child artist with Kismet in the 1940s, Mehmood made his name as a comic character actor in the 1950s, appearing in supporting roles in films like CID and Pyaasa. But the actor always harboured ambitions of being a leadi...