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 ...

[amitnaha]

In few songs.. rather very few songs.. the dialogue before the song creates an atmosphere.. where the song almost blends in.. creating a total effect..
Such was the case in movie 'Safar', and the dialogue between Rajesh and Ashoke Kumar before the song 'Zindagi ka safar'..

I present here that small clip. Probably the safar LP had the dialogue included. I have no clue. But I have a 20 year old cassette recording (no cable.. the cass-players kept side by side with a newspaper cover to exclude outside noise :-)

Still I present this clip as the dialogue-song blending is superb in this case. The only other such event with Rajesh I remember is from movie 'Amar prem'.. (that recording I have in pretty good condition.. will upload when Swarapriya eventually reach 'Amar prem' ).



Amit

This post has been edited by amitnaha: Feb 26 2009, 12:32 PM

[swarapriya]

In few songs.. rather very few songs.. the dialogue before the song creates an atmosphere.. where the song almost blends in.. creating a total effect..
Such was the case in movie 'Safar', and the dialogue between Rajesh and Ashoke Kumar before the song 'Zindagi ka safar'..

I present here that small clip. Probably the safar LP had the dialogue included. I have no clue. But I have a 20 year old cassette recording (no cable.. the cass-players kept side by side with a newspaper cover to exclude outside noise :-)

Still I present this clip as the dialogue-song blending is superb in this case. The only other such event with Rajesh I remember is from movie 'Amar prem'.. (that recording I have in pretty good condition.. will upload when Swarapriya eventually reach 'Amar prem' ).



Amit

Amit, I just saw the movie ("Safar") again. Rajesh definitely had a way with his dialogue delivery. I also remember the scene from "Amar Prem" just before the famous Kishore's song "Chingaari Koi Bhadke".

Cheers,
Swarapriya