one of the leading actresses in Hindi films because of the film's nationwide success. Hemant Kumar's music and her dance on the song, "Man Dole, Mera tan dole", rendered by Lata Mangeshkar was one of the highlights of the film. In the same year she acted in Miss Mala with Kishore Kumar, which was a box office success. Vyjayanthimala debuted in Kannada cinema through a film called Asha Nirasha which was produced by G. D. Venkatram. The film had Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle and Mohammed Rafi as the playback singers, but the movie was unreleased, though the producer's son Srikant Venkatram claimed that the film was released and flopped miserably at box office which made the film obscure. Devdas and breakthrough In 1955, Vyjayanthimala acted in five Hindi films. The first one was director Abdur Rashid Kardar's Yasmin alongside actor Suresh, which won the Filmfare Best Cinematographer for Dwarka Divecha. Besides that, she also starred in three other films, namely Pehli Jhalak with Kishore Kumar, Sitara with Pradeep Kumar and Jashan with Karan Dewan. Eventually all her four films released in 1955 failed at the box office. The same year, Bimal Roy cast her as Chandramukhi opposite Dilip Kumar in the critically acclaimed Devdas, which was the adaptation of the novel with same title by Sharat Chandra Chatterji. The industry initially was not in favour of this choice when they heard about Vyjayanthimala being cast in Bimal Roy's film, the response being: "Why don't you take comedian Kishore Kumar as Devdas?". Initially Nargis was selected for Chandramukhi's role, but she refused to accept the role. The role was later offered to Bina Rai and Suraiya but they too turned it down as they wanted to essay the lead role of Paro, which was earlier offered to Meena Kumari. Subsequently, the film unit suffered with financial crisis and at this point Vyjayanthimala offered to do the role of Chandramukhi, where she said to Bimal Roy, "I am ready if you think I can do it". On the other hand, Nabendu Ghosh, the script writer of Devdas, said that, "I did not approve of Vyjayanthimala [as Chandramukhi], but we had no option – no one wanted to play Chandramukhi, and we were committed to our distributors... She was, of course, a very good actress, but she was too young for Chandramukhi, as envisioned by Saratbabu". On her performance, Rediff wrote: "Vyjayanthimala imbues