New Delhi. ‘When the lion takes back one step, understand that it is about to jump!’ This dialogue is from the 1973 film Zanjeer. In this dialogue, Inspector Vijay Khanna i.e. Amitabh Bachchan showed confidence and passion in the film. But, do you know that both confidence and passion were broken during the release of the film. When Amitabh Bachchan, who gave one flop after another, made up his mind to cover the Boria bed, he did not even imagine in his dream that it would be his career turning point. Big B then came to the industry. In order to maintain himself in the industry, he was looking for a hit and Prakash Mehra came as a support for him in that era.
‘Zanjeer’ released on 11 May 1973. This was the film of Amitabh Bachchan’s career, after which he did not look back. Prior to this film, he worked in 12 films, but ‘Bombay to Goa’ and ‘Anand’ could get only two hits. ‘Zanjeer’ got Amitabh, the film was also shot, but the film’s struggle did not diminish.
Dharmendra bought ‘chain’, then exchange
Before Amitabh Bachchan, ‘Zanjeer’ was offered to Dharmendra, Dev Anand and Rajkumar. Prakash Mehra told the entire story of this film in an interview. He had told that this film was not in reality, but had bought its story from actor Dharmendra, Salim-Javed. At the same time, Prakash Mehra was planning to make a film called ‘Samadhi’. When Dharmendra came to know about this, he liked the idea so much that he gave the ‘Zanjeer’ director instead of ‘Samadhi’.
Released in 1973, ‘Zanjeer’ not only made Amitabh Bachchan a superstar, but also started the new era of ‘Angry Young Man’ in Hindi cinema.
3 stars have rejected film, then advised life
Dharmendra refused Prakash Mehra for this film by doing his brother’s film. Dev Anand liked the story, but wanted to do a film on his terms. If Prakash Mehra is not believed, then pulled back from the film. After Dev Anand’s refusal, Vinod Mehra went to Akkhad actor Rajkumar, who was shooting in Chennai. Rajkumar liked the film so much that he was ready to start shooting from the next day, but he wanted Mehra to shoot it in South India, so that his shoot would continue, which he was doing in Chennai. However, Prakash Mehra did not accept this condition of Rajkumar. Prakash Mehra was under stress when 3 superstars rejected the film. Pran understood his problem and advised Amitabh Bachchan to take it in the film.
After Mumtaz’s refusal, Jaya Bhaduri decided to do the film.
Selection of Prakash Mehra
Many questions also arose on Prakash Mehra on Amitabh’s selection. Prakash Mehra was shocked when Mumtaz decided to marry and refused to work in the film. Amitabh told Jaya Bhaduri that no heroine wants to work with him. Jaya then told him to ask Mehra to approach him and then the casting of the film was completed.
The distributor used to laugh, weeps Big B
In an interview given to Rediff, he said that there was no financier and the distributor had fled. They used to laugh at me, ‘Who is this long stupid hero?’ Amitabh cried, he felt very disappointed. Interestingly, ‘Zanjeer’ was competed with ‘Bobby’ at the box office. Prakash Mehra revealed that Raj Kapoor was surprised by the success of the film, as the film had only three songs, which were rare in those days.
Amitabh Bachchan was disappointed after seeing the distributor’s stance and the film’s early failure.
Amitabh was in fever after seeing the initial condition of the film
In his interview of 1998, Prakash Mehra said, ‘The bad times of the film had so badly affected Amitabh that he had a fever. Actually, the first four days in Bombay were not good. He had told that he started feeling that the film would flop. Seeing a bad start, Amitabh had such a bad effect that he had a fever. He had told, ‘After 4 days, when the second week’s booking started, I was passing by the GATE GALCE Cinema in Bandra. I saw that there is a crowd of advance booking at the ticket window and the ticket of 5 rupees was being sold for 100 rupees. When Amitabh heard about this, his fever increased to 104 degrees, he was unable to believe that he had become a star.
90 lakh budget, earning more than 17 crores
Made in a budget of about 90 lakhs, this film earned Rs 17.46 crore at the box office. It was a blockbuster at that time. That year Amitabh Bachchan was nominated for the Filmfare Award for ‘Zanjeer’, but lost the award to Rishi Kapoor for ‘Bobby’.