Rajesh Khanna, The Super Star Options

[swarapriya]

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 ...

[swarapriya]

Doli (1969)

This was made from a hit Telugu movie "Tene Manasulu". The movie in Telugu was kind of trailblazing. Every actor in it was a newcomer. Producers spared no expense and made the movie even in color. It was a huge gamble. Fortunately it paid off handsomely as it became very successful. They decided to make it in Hindi and when they signed both Babita and Rajesh Khanna, they were relative newcomers. Hindi version was also directed by the director of the Telugu movie, Adurti Subba Rao. The movie in Hindi only enjoyed modest success. But it has some very beautiful songs tuned by Ravi.

Here are the details of the songs and the songs themselves ...

This post has been edited by swarapriya: Jan 30 2009, 11:33 PM