Not all partnerships that begin well, end well. Actor Rajesh Khanna and filmmaker Yash Chopra’s equation, after two successful ventures, Ittefaq and Daag–the director’s first film as an independent producer–hit a rough patch, with both sides blaming each other for the fallout. In Yasser Usman’s book, Rajesh Khanna: The Untold Story of India’s First Superstar, the author captured how cracks started to emerge when Yash Chopra decided to cast Amitabh Bachchan as the hero of his film Deewar, despite Rajesh Khanna claiming in an interview of the time that the film was first offered to him.
The film’s co-creenwriter Salim Khan, however, had told the author that there were “no talks” with Rajesh Khanna for the lead role, as it written for Amitabh Bachchan. After Deewar, Yash Chopra started planning his next, Kabhi Kabhie–a multi-starrer romantic drama spanning two generations, led by a character who was a romantic poet, a role tailormade for Rajesh Khanna. But, he was again not considered for the part, which went to Amitabh Bachchan– an anti-casting because he had already established himself as the ‘angry young man.’
Though Yash Chopra officially justified signing Amitabh for his romantic films Kabhi Kabhie and Silsilia as a case of “better tuning”, the writer of the said films, Sagar Sarhadi, who also knew Rajesh Khanna from his theatre days, told the author a different story.
“He remembers once asking Yash Chopra about why he didn’t sign Rajesh again after making a successful film like Daag. Yash Chopra answered, ‘Yaar, working with him is very difficult… He calls his producers to his home and indulges in drinking till late (in the) night. Till the time he doesn’t want to sleep himself, producers have to show their presence there. Then if he is going to Madras for shooting, the producers are to drop him to the airport and receive him when he comes back. I can’t do this. I can’t handle these superstar tantrums on a regular basis.'”
Rajesh Khanna.
Bharathi S Pradhan, editor of the Film Street Journal, was of the view that Yash Chopra appeased Rajesh Khanna till the point he needed him, and then he got an alternative in Amitabh Bachchan. If not, she believed, Yash Chopra “would have continued doing whatever Rajesh Khanna asked of him.”
The actor, however, had his own justification for why he didn’t collaborate with Yash Chopra after their initial success. The book details how Rajesh Khanna “didn’t like one bit” the filmmaker moving on from him to Amitabh Bachchan.
“In any case, after Namak Haraam, he had become too insecure of Amitabh. Sagar Sarhadi told me, ‘Once I went to Khandala to write a script. I met Rajesh Khanna there. I asked him, ‘Yaar, why are you not doing films with Yash Chopra?’ He replied irritated, ‘Yash is not a good director. He makes me work hard from morning till evening. I can’t work so hard.’ I started laughing at his answer,” the book quotes.
Yash Chopra and Rajesh Khanna worked again in the 1988 drama Vijay– which was a box office failure.
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