Rajesh Khanna, The Super Star Options

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Rajesh Khanna, The Super Star

Rajesh Khanna was dubbed as the first Super Star of the Hindi screen. In a reign of five years, from 1969 to 1973, he made a hit after hit that was unprecedented in the Hindi cinema history. He was working on stage when he won the talent contest by the United Producers of Bombay. These were the 10 producers who formed a team to select new talent as an answer to escalating salaries for the established stars.

Rajesh's first movie was Chetan Anand's "Aakhri Khat" released in 1966. Inspite of a great director and some beautiful music, the film was a commercial failure. But things changed when in 1969, Shakti Samanta's "Aradhana" was released. The movie with its beautiful music and strong performance by Sharmila Tagore created history. In Rajesh Khanna, a star was born. And for the next few years, he couldn't do anything wrong.

Rajesh made nearly 130 movies in his professional career. One of our Forum members, Debjyoti, gave me this idea to start a thread on the songs of his albums. By happy coincidence I have CDs of almost all of his movie albums. In the coming months, I will start sharing these albums in chronological order.

Here is part one of Rajesh Khanna's filmography ...

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Aradhana (1969)

"Aradhana" established several firsts in the Hindi film industry. Shakti Samanta was known to make entertainers and not emotional dramas. Here he goes against the trend to make a great break away movie. The movie itself was based on the 1946 Hollywood classic “To Each His Own”. Samanta won the Filmfare best picture award for the movie. Five years later, in 1974, the movie was made into Tamil ("Sivahamiyiri Selvan") and Telugu ("Kannavari Kalalu").

Samanta originally offered the role to that fine Bengali actress Aparna Sen. For reasons unknow, she refused the role. Samanta who earlier introduced Sharmila Tagore in “Kashmir Ki Kali” offered her the role where she has to play a mother most of the movie. The serious side of Sharmila was only seen in Satyajit Ray’s films but never before in a Hindi movie. She played the role Olivia de Havilland won an Oscar in the English version. Interestingly, Sharmila also won the Filmfare award for best actress for her touching portrayal in this movie.

Rajesh Khanna starred in five movies before “Aradhana”. All of them were failures. In 1968, he didn’t have a single movie. But this all changed in late 1969. “Aradhana” was released nationwide in October 1969. By overnight it became a huge hit and Rajesh Khanna became a phenomenon. A super star was suddenly discovered by the film going public. The Khanna phenomenon lasted nearly five years until romance was replaced by angry young man’s problems.

This movie also catapulted Kishore Kumar to a playback singing force. In an article in “Screen”, the writer explains that the two duets of Rafi Saab were first picturized and Burman da was all set to go for other songs with Rafi. But Burman da seriously fell ill and went into coma. R.D. Burman who was assisting his father, took over the reins. He also made the decision to use Kishore’s voice for Rajesh. Both of his solos and the duet with Lata that he recorded became huge hits. The song “Roop Tera Mastaana” became a national craze. It also fetched Kishore da a Filmfare award as the best male playback singer.

Because of the date conflicts of Sharmila and Rajesh, for the song "Mere Sapnon Ki Rani", Samanta shot only Rajesh's portions in Darjeeling. Sharmila's portions were done in a studio. Incidentally, in the recent movie "Parineeta (2005)" where Sharmila's real life son, Saif Ali Khan, plays a major role, apparently rides the same train his mother should have used.

All these songs came from a CD. I am also including a version song by Amit Kumar, “Mere Sapnon Ki Rani” from his private album. Now here are the details of all the songs and the songs themselves …