rajesh khanna
Monish Aggarwal
here's what i know about him.
Rajesh (real name Jatin Khanna) was from a very rich family in Bombay
They may be originally from som place else, but thats what i know. His
mother was a Bengali and father a Punjabi.
From the very tender age he was an arrogant guy and always wanted his way,
which the Film Industry later saw - His Rise and Fall - to Superstardom.
As far as his schooling goes i don't know , but he did his college with
another Film star and then his buddy (may be still) Jeetendra (ravi kapoor)
at JaiHind College in Bombay. They were both struggling actors then.
A great fan of Guru Dutt, rajesh always had a desire to work with Mr.Dutt
which unfortunately could not happen, as Mr. Dutt passed away before rajesh
could make a name for himself in Film Industry. And what a name he made, the
term Superstar was for the very first time coined for Rajesh Khanna and girls
swooned over him and went crazy just by the mention of his name.
I had read in an article not long time back , which had interviews of Vinod
Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan saying that they themselves have not enjoyed the
kind of Popularity and fame and the Hysteria that Rajesh created at his time.
Amitabh even went to the extent of saying that he is not being modest , but it
is a fact that rajesh was much more popular than he ever was in his entire
career.
well, rajesh could not maintain that popularity is entirely a different thing.
That is just in short to give an idea about the first Superstar of Hindi Movies
I think there has been an article on him with Junior G which was posted some
time back on this net. If u can get hold of that that will give u a complete
picture of Rajesh Khanna.
Maybe some kind soul can re-post it!
bye for now
Monish.
pandey_anup
Jackie Shroff admits that Rajesh Khana(RK) was the only superstar
bollywood had. Why? Amitabh Bachchan had/has huge popularity
for much longer time than RK. I guess some of the reasons for that
are as follows
1) RK in his heydays was loved by almost everyone and disliked by
almost nobody. Amitabh even at his peak had many persons who
dislike him and not for baseless reasons.
2) RK was the King of romance and AB was King of action.
More people are bound to love a romantic person than a violent
person. :-)
3) RK was very lucky to get the support of directors like Shakti
Samantha, J. Omprakash, Asit Sen and some beautiful romantic scripts of
Gulshan Nanda. AB also had Hrishikesh Mukherjee but unfortunately
his movies with Hrishida were'nt commercially super-duper hits (some
were flops) even though Hrishida gave really beautiful movies with AB.
AB's success came with Prakash Mehra and Manmohan Desai's eternally
recycled "Lost & Found" formula. The AB's movies were very popular
but were nowhere near the evergreen movies like "Aradhana" & "Aap Ki Kasam".
4) Last but not least RK got really good songs like in Aradhana, Kati
Patang, Safar, Daag, Aap Ki Kasam, Amar Prem, Mehboob Ki Mehndi,
and many others courtesy good song situations (script), good music
directors (R.D. Burman, S.D. Burman), good lyricists (Anand Bakshi)
and above all Kishore Kumar. I agree that most of these guys were
there in AB's time too but they too were handicapped by lack of good
song situations. Thus AB had to content with songs like "Jiski
Bibi", "Aaj Rapat Jaye" which even though were popular in their
time lacked depth and substance. You possibly can't cherish these
songs for long time. ;-) Sorry AB fans ( I am also a AB fan).
RK as i understand was not very professional and was/is with a large ego
unlike AB who is very professional and very modest (which is uncommon
esp. if you attain the height which AB has, no pun intended). This may
explain short span of super-stardom for RK.
RK become lucky second time with super hits Avtar and Souten. I must
admire his persistence to stay in Film industry despite his cycle of
Superstardom and "Who is Rajesh Khanna".
As far as acting ability is considered even though I am die hard RK fan
I think AB has an edge in many aspects esp. Dialogue delivery, Diction.
RK had strong presence and charismatic appeal (AB also have them) which
overcame all his shortcomings (there were'nt many) in his acting. I
must add that Rajesh Khanna did'nt use glycerine for tears even when he
had to give ten shots for particular scene ( I read it in an interview
of Padmini Kolhapure).
Let me stop here (Not a moment too soon :-)
Cheers
Anup
Email: pande...@tandem.com