Hrishikesh Mukherjee on his birthday claims having given big break to Amitabh Bachchan with ‘Anand’

Hrishikesh Mukherjee on his birthday claims having given big break to Amitabh Bachchan with ‘Anand’

Veteran Filmmaker Hrishikesh Mukherjee with pride claims to have Amitabh Bachchan a big break in Anand alongside super star Rajesh Khanna. He had Amitabh laughing in Anand’s climax.

On Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s birth anniversary, revisited his bond with Amitabh Bachchan.
The director saved him from being just the ‘angry young man tag which he got from Zanjeer.

Infact, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Amitabh Bachchan worked together in eight films.

In Anand, as Rajesh Khanna as Anand was breathing his last, it was his Babu Moshai Amitabh Bachchan who sat by his bedside and cried copiously at his friend’s demise.

Amitabh Bachchan claims at that very moment, we Ramesh Deo, Seema Deo were with Babu Moshai Rajesh Khanna. We could all feel his sorrow, as if we had lost a loved one in Anand.

But to everyone’s surprise, what happened amid the shoot of this scene was just the opposite. Amitabh Bachchan, who played Babu Moshai, and Rajesh Khanna, who played the titular character, were being shot from the top angle by director Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

Bachchan’s character was supposed to have an emotional release but such is the magic of the movies that we didn’t even know that this whole time, Rajesh and Amitabh were laughing uncontrollably. “

The truth is that Amitabh and Rajesh Khanna were factually laughing. Amitabh’s chin was tickling his stomach.

This film started a collaboration between Bachchan and Mukherjee that lasted for many years. Bachchan and Mukherjee worked together in eight films and all of those eight characters played by Bachchan were distinct from each other.

Bachchan’s first brush with stardom was with 1973’s Prakash Mehra directorial Zanjeer..But, but as the years went by, the ‘angry young man’ label stuck.

And so, filmmakers like Prakash Mehra, Manmohan Desai, and even Yash Chopra, along with writers Salim-Javed, kept repeating the same formula over and over again.

In the midst of this, Hrishikesh Mukherjee pushed Bachchan as an actor and experimented with him in roles that weren’t always heroic. Anand Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan, Babu Moshai were at their best and the film emerged as a super hit film which is still being remembered.

News Edit K.V.Raman