Manmohan Desai and Prakash Mehra are the two movie makers who are credited with “making” Amitabh Bachchan. A doubtful assumption. Did Shakti Samanta “make” Rajesh Khanna with Aradhana?
If you have it in you, success will find you sooner or later.
Prakash Mehra was a successful producer-director before he began working with Amitabh Bachchan. Way back in 1968 when Prakash Mehra directed Haseena Maan Jayegi with Shashi Kapoor and Babita, it surprised the hell out of the box office by turning into a moneyspinner. The music by Kalyanji-Anandji was a big USP.
Mehra collaborated with Kalyanji-Anandji for a total of twelve films including musical blockbusters like Lawaaris (featuring Amitabh Bachchan’s self-rendered chartbuster Mere angne mein), Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (featuring the all-time hit Salaam-e-ishq), and of course Zanjeer which was the first of the seven films that Mehra and Amitabh Bachchan collaborated on.
Zanjeer changed a lot of lives. It turned around writers Salim-Javed’s, Amitabh Bachchan’s and Prakash Mehra’s careers. It redefined the screenplay for Hindi cinema. The comedy track was done away with, for once. The hero didn’t sing any song. He didn’t even smile in the film. At the time when it was being planned all of what Salim-Javed thought to be USPs in their script proved to be stumbling blocks. Many heroes refused Zanjeer. Dharmendra was the first hero it went to. Dev Anand and Raj Kumar also refused. Dilip Kumar felt that it didn’t jell with the kind of films he was doing. He felt there wasn’t much room for a performance for the hero. However, when one asked Dilip Kumar which films he regretted not doing he mentioned Baiju Bawra, Pyaasa and Zanjeer.
If one cannot imagine Zanjeer without the Bachchan baritone, one cannot imagine Prakash Mehra’s Namak Halaal without the song Pag ghungroo. For Namak Halaal, Mehra let go of his permanent musical partners Kalyanji-Anandji for the trendier Bappi Lahiri. Pag ghungroo was shot by Prakash Mehra in a 11-minute sequence, the longest song sequence in a Hindi film. Kishore Kumar sang Pag ghungroo as only he could. He rightly won the Filmfare award for his vocals.
Bappi, Mehra and Bachchan came together for another musical blockbuster Sharaabi, a blatantly plagiarized version of the Dudley Moore hit Arthur. Mehra’s finest hours were Muqaddar Ka Sikandar and Haath Ki Safaai. While the former was a robust re-telling of Devdas, the latter which came a year after the game-changing success of Zanjeer did not feature Amitabh Bachchan.
Mehra’s Haath Ki Safaai has an interesting history. It was a remake of a 1959 film called Do Ustad. Salim-Javed saw Do Ustad and they sensed the potential in the plot that was lost in translation. Producer Ibrahim Nadiadwala bought the rights of Do Ustad and remade it as Haath Ki Safaai in 1974 with Prakash Mehra as director. The film boasted of one of Kalyanji-Anandji’s all-time great songs Wada karle sajna.
The last film that Prakash Mehra made with Amitabh Bachchan was Jaadugar in 1989. After his fall-out with Amitabh Bachchan, Prakash Mehra remained off-duty for four years. He then made Zindagi Ek Juaa with Anil Kapoor which is easily the worst film of Mehra’s career. It would not be incorrect to say that Prakash Mehra’s career didn’t begin with Amitabh Bachchan. But it certainly ended after their fall-out.
