‘Amitabh Bachchan was thrown out of the film, replaced by Sanjay Khan': Raza Murad recalls how Zanjeer changed Big B's fortune after 16 flops
In a recent interview with The Filmy Charcha, Raza Murad claimed that one needs 90% luck to make it big in the industry. To prove his point, the actor took the example of actor Amitabh Bachchan, whose life changed overnight with a single film that chose him as its lead star.
'Amitabh Bachchan was thrown out of Duniya Ka Mela. The makers replaced him with Sanjay Khan. 16 of his films flopped. Distributors said nobody will turn up to theatres if he will star in a film. At that time, his luck was not with him. But when the luck was in his favour, everything fell in place.'
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He explained, 'When Prakash Mehra wanted to make Zanjeer, he went to Dilip Kumar, Dharmendra, Dev Anand, Rajkumar, and they all refused for some or the other reason. The subject was extremely hero-oriented, yet, these superstars rejected it. Nobody knows why, but one can say that the luck wanted Amitabh Bachchan to lead the film. When nobody wanted him, and Prakash Mehra had no option, Jaya Bachchan (then Jaya Bahaduri) recommended the director he take Amitabh Bachchan and rest is history.'
With this anecdote, Raza Murad asserted that 'Luck is very important in this industry.'
Zanjeer didn't just become a turning point in the life of Amitabh Bachchan but also writer duo Salim-Javed. Apart from them, the film's character Sher Khan, played by actor Pran became a cult figure with his Pathani attire. Dialogues from the film, such as 'Yeh police station hai, tumhare baap ka ghar nahin' became a part of pop culture. The film redefined Hindi film heroes with many claiming Amitabh Bachchan's Vijay gave voice to the frustrated Indian middle class of that era. It shifted the focus from romantic heroes to gritty-brooding protagonists.
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Indian Express
12 minutes ago
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The cacophony and bustle of Gurugram feel distant in the quiet of modernist Krishen Khanna's home in the corporate sprawl. At 100, he still paints regularly. 'I have just started painting now. My thoughts are much more lucid and I am working in ways that I haven't before,' he says. Immersed in a set of monochrome drawings on canvas at present, he has also recently completed a large painting that reflects his enduring fondness for music. Rendered in sombre shades, it depicts a dancer in red moving to the rhythms of a tabla and a sarangi. 'It went through many iterations,' says Khanna, 'Creating art is like breathing, I live it daily.' Much like the calmer life that he now leads, the centennial celebration on July 5 was an intimate affair, with wife Renu, their three children and five grandchildren. 'We've all come together for the occasion,' says his son Karan, also a photo artist. The sole surviving member of the Progressive Artists' Group — founded in 1947 to forge a modern vocabulary for Indian art — Khanna has carried forward its legacy. He recalls fond memories of a changing art world in India but does not hide the loneliness of being the last one standing among his friends. 'He is still painting and thinking about art but he often speaks about losing his friends to time, including those younger to him,' says close friend, poet and critic Ashok Vajpeyi. A keeper of stories, in an interview with The Indian Express he had recalled the evening of 1961, when, after years of balancing a banking job with art, he resigned from Grindlays Bank to lead life as a full-time artist. He reminisced: 'On my last day at work, (MF) Husain, (VS) Gaitonde and Bal Chhabda were waiting outside. The moment I stepped out, Bal took off my tie and said I wouldn't need it anymore. We had tea to celebrate, then dinner at The Coronation Durbar. Raza even threw a party in Paris — they had all been urging me to make the leap.' Largely self-taught, he was only seven when he made his first interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci's iconic The Last Supper, a theme that reappeared throughout his artistic career. He had been introduced to the mural through a print that his father had brought back from Europe. Though his rendering received accolades, art wasn't a career even in distant consideration. Attaining the Rudyard Kipling Scholarship at 13, he travelled to England to study at the Imperial Service College in Windsor, where he excelled both in academics and extracurriculars. Forced to return to Pakistan following the outbreak of World War II, in 1942, after his family relocated to Lahore, he enrolled at Government College to complete his undergraduate studies and also began taking evening classes at the Mayo School of Art, later honing his drawing skills at artist Sheikh Ahmed's Studio One. The more onerous ordeals were yet to come, arriving in the form of the Partition, which brought with it widespread violence and mass displacement. Khanna moved with his family to Shimla. The trauma he witnessed would remain with him forever, periodically surfacing in his art. His 1947 oil, Refugee Train Late 16 HRS, portrays anxious people waiting to cross the border. Through his 2016 diptych Benediction on a Battlefield that depicts the Pandavas paying obeisance to Bhishma before he passed away, he also reflects on the agony of families separated due to the Partition. ******* Happenstance had also played a role in ushering him into the mainstream art world. On a ship, his wife had met an acquaintance who knew artist SB Palsikar. She wrote to him, requesting him to see Khanna's work. Impressed by his calibre, Palsikar returned from his Mumbai studio with a small canvas depicting people reading the newspaper after Mahatma Gandhi's assassination. 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Khanna, for instance, arranged accommodation for several artists, including Tyeb Mehta, when they were moving to Delhi. He even persuaded Kumar Gallery to give Mehta the same monthly stipend of Rs 500 that he received in the early '60s. Vajpeyi recalls how Khanna was the perennial peacemaker and also credits him for being the anchor who ensured that they were in correspondence through letters even when each of them was navigating different continents. Khanna himself widely exhibited internationally through the '50s and '60s, including London, Tokyo, New York and Brazil. As the first recipient of the prestigious John D Rockefeller III Fund fellowship, in 1962 he travelled to New York, passing through countries like Singapore, Indonesia and Japan, which led to engagements with the East Asian art of Sumi-e in his work. During this period, the primarily figurative artist also briefly explored abstracts. 'I intermittently do several things. I had some shows of abstract art and then moved on. It's a chance method of seeing,' he had said. The experiments extended beyond the canvas and included forays into photography in the late '60s and '70s, when he created composite images through layered projections. The '80s, meanwhile, saw him produce one of India's most monumental public murals — adorning the ceiling at ITC Maurya's lobby in Delhi, The Great Procession is a visual epic that dwells on myriad encounters through multiple protagonists and scenes. A voracious reader, while his references span a spectrum — including Indian and Christian mythology, music, poetry and literature — the constant thread in his engagements has remained his sensitivity to the human condition and the marginalised. If in the '60s, truck drivers whom he would see from his Nizamuddin home at night became his protagonists, he later painted a series depicting scenes at dhabas as an extension of home for those on the road. 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