Amitabh Bachchan wasn’t a product of the film industry, but he got over 10 opportunities to prove himself before he finally did. He started with a string of flops, and was basically out of work when Javed Akhtar and Salim Khan fought for him to star in the film Zanjeer. It would establish him as a star, and send him on a journey that continues to this day. Bachchan is among the most popular movie stars in cinema history, and perhaps the most popular that India has ever produced. And it all began with Zanjeer, a movie that was pitched to him at a time when he had no work.
In an interview with Hook Global, Javed Akhtar said that he and Salim Khan cannot take credit for ‘launching’ Bachchan as the ‘Angry Young Man’, although he admitted that they had to fight for him to be cast in Zanjeer because he wasn’t considered to be commercially viable at the time. He praised Bachchan for the performance that he delivered in the film, which was unlike anything that had been seen before in Hindi cinema. He said, “Most of the time, we don’t respect the talent. There were very few people who had great respect for him, even after 11 of his films had flopped in a row.”
He continued, “Jaya ji wasn’t his wife then, knew what he (was capable of) and had great respect for his talent. Hrishikesh Mukherjee had a great respect for his talent, and kept on giving him work. We saw him in a film that didn’t do well, but we could see that he is a volcano, waiting to erupt. He was very good in his worst films also. The film was bad, the script was bad, the dialogue was bad, the screenplay was wrong, but his work was impeccable. We had total confidence. Here is a major, major star who was waiting for the right opportunity.”
Asked what it was like to pitch Zanjeer to Bachchan in the early 1970s, Javed Akhtar recalled, “I was totally convinced that nobody could play this role the way he could. I hardly knew him when I narrated the script to him. We had met only once before. I called him. I said, ‘There is a script I would like to narrate to you. When can I meet you?’ He summoned me immediately, because he was sitting around jobless. I went an narrated the complete script, and he looked at me with wonder. He asked, ‘Do you think I can pull this role off?’ I said, ‘Nobody in this country can play it better than you’.”
In Khalid Mohamed’s book, To Be Or Not To B: Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya recalled the moments of sorrow that both her husband and son went through in their professional lives. She said about Amitabh, “I never took his flops seriously; I was convinced that they were a passing phase. He was learning and improving. He would not get depressed by his failures but yes, at times he would retort sharply, ‘Naturally no one wants me since I’m a flop actor.’
Zanjeer paved the way for further Salim-Javed potboilers starring Bachchan, such as Deewaar and Sholay. The writer-duo split up not long afterwards, and went on their separate paths. Javed Akhtar established himself as a lyricist, while Bachchan continues to be one of Hindi cinema’s greatest movie stars.
