Johny Mera Naam, the film that influenced future Hindi films for decades.

The 1950s and 1960s were the eras of Family dramas but with the release of this film Action and Thriller genre began. This Golden Jubilee thriller was the first Indian film to cross a commercial milestone—it did Rs. 50 lakh business per territory when tickets were priced at a maximum Rs 2.50?

Johny Mera Naam remains the career-biggest hit of brothers Dev Anand and writer-director-editor Vijay Anand, together and separately? It also is Vijay Anand’s last hit as a filmmaker.

The year 1970 was the beginning of a decade that was to give Indian cinema an amazing thrust. The films came in a wide range to suit the interests of all sections. Romance remained paramount but crime thrillers and offbeat subjects dominated the world of Hindi cinema. It was hardly surprising that Dev Anand chose to take the lead with “Johny Mera Naam”, a huge hit with catchy scores from Kalyanji-Anandji and one of the raunchiest numbers ever with bold lyrics and a bolder dance by Padma Khanna.

The movie, a thriller all the way, had the stamp of quality from director Vijay ‘Goldie’ Anand. He and Dev Anand had begun their association with “Nau Do Gyarah” in 1957 and went a long way to give Indian cinema classics like “Guide”, “Kala Bazaar” and “Tere Ghar Ke Samne”.

The film was full of entertainment with lots of twist and turns. The music of the film was very popular. Kalyanji-Anandji provided the music. The cabaret, Husn ke lakhon rang, Nafrat karne walon ke and O mere raja are the other popular tunes from the film.Song picturisation was Goldie’s forte and Pal bhar ke liye koi hame pyar kar le, where Dev serenades the dream girl through windows of all shapes and sizes, remains a masterpiece even today. 

When the film released Dev Anand was nearing 50, formed a dazzling pair with fresh as a dewdrop Hema Malini. This was the first of the nine movies including where Dev Anand and Hema Malini worked together followed by Tere Mere Sapne, Shareef Badmash, Joshila, Chhupa Rustam till Censor in 2001. 

The Great Thumris of Bollywood

Thumri is a com­mon style of light classical music.  The text is romantic and devotional in nature, and us­ually revolves around a girl's love for Krishna.  The language is a dialect of Hindi called Brij bhasha. It arose in pop­ular­ity du­ring the 19th cen­tury. It was made popular among the common people by Hindi films.
Thumris have been used in films right from the very early days of talkies. Rajkumari had sung a number of Thumris in the 30s. K L Saigal had sung a popular thumri, piya bina nahi aawat, way back in 1935, in Devdas. And who can forget, Saigal’s Baabul Mora Naihar, in 1938 movie Street Singer. 
Thumri is basically sung in a slow tempo, later a fast version of Thumri emerged called Lucknowi Thumri and another form Punjabi Thumri also emerged in Hindi films. There were many songs and singers in the 40s and 50s where Thumri became popular.
One name that truly epitomizes the Hindustani classical music of the 20thcentury is that of Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. Often touted as Tansen of the 20thcentury, this musical genius blended the best of classical music and created a unique style of his own. Some of the famous Thumri are ‘Yaad Piya Ki Aaye’, ‘Aaye Na Balam’ and ‘Prem Ke Phande Men’.
Begum Akhtar was another great singer who was known as the Queen of Ghazal but was also a great Thumri performer.
Here I am giving a few of the Thumris from the Hindi films:

Song of Street Singer 1934

Song of Devdas 1935

Song of Bharthari 1944

Nirmala Devi

Song of Shabab 1954

Song of Naubahar 1954

Song of Musafir 1957

Song of Kala Pani 1958

Song of Rani Roopmati 1959

Song of Mughal e Azam 1960

Song of Mughal e Azam 1960

Song of Dil Hi To Hai 1963

Song of Dooj Ka Chand 1964

Song of Pakeezah 1971

Song of Amar Prem 1972

Song of Swami 1977

Song of Mein Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki 1978

Song of Kudrat 1981

History behind the historical -MUGHAL_E_AZAM

K.Asif first launched this film in 1944 with financier Shiraz Ali, casting Sapru, Chandramohan and Nargis in the roles later done by Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Madhubala. But Shiraz's migration to Pakistan after Partition, the communally-sensitive atmosphere after Independence and finally Chandramohan's death in 1949 made him drop the project.
K Asif wanted to start the project once again in 1951 but no financier was interested in this film. It was Shapoorji Pallonji, the construction magnate, came on board in 1951. K Asif was interested to make this film in colour but the financier refused to finance further. Ultimately he did so in the song Pyar kiya to darna kya and the climax. The film was finally completed at a cost of about Rs 1.5 crore in 1960. 
Asif had planned to make Mughal-e-Azam in three languages - Hindi, Tamil and English. While the Hindi version became a super hit, the Tamil-dubbed version came a cropper at the box-office and he subsequently dropped the idea of dubbing it in English in the voices of British actors.
For the picturization of the song, Pyar kiya to darna kya a grand set of Sheesh Mahal was constructed. The grandeur was incomparable: the mirrors for the dance sequence on the Sheesh Mahal set were coated with a thin, transparent wax layer to prevent reflection from studio lights. The set was 80 feet wide and 150 feet long - and 35 feet high. And cinematographer R.D.Mathur would sometimes take up to eight hours to light a single shot! Sometimes, 14 cameras were used when the norm then was just one or two, and unlike the normal 60 to 125 shooting days, MEA thus needed 500, with more than a million feet of negative being used.

The song Pyar kiya to darna kya costed Rs 10 lakh to shoot, which was equal to the production cost of a big film! This Lata chartbuster's graph was perfected by Naushad and Shakeel in a marathon session from four in the evening to daybreak the following day on the terrace of Naushad's bungalow. Neither ate food during this period.
Music director Naushad composed many more than the 12 songs finally seen in the film, and Lata Mangeshkar sang eight solos and the duet Teri mehfil mein with Shamshad Begum. The hits were led by Mohe panghat pe and Mohabbat ki jhoothi kahani.
For Rafi's song Ae mohabbat zindabad a chorus of 100 singers were used.K Asif wanted 2 songs to be sung by Bade Ghulam Ali khan. Since Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan did not want to sing for films and quoted an exorbitant sum to discourage Naushad and Asif, they agreed to the sum (in multiples of the topmost playback singer's fees) and the maestro had no choice but to render Shubh din aayo and Prem jogan banke as he had no excuse left!

The war sequences used 2000 camels, 4000 horses and 8000 men, most of the latter being real soldiers from the Army. Prithviraj wore real armour, real weapons were crafted and real jewellery used. The best tailors, embroiders, jewellers, shoemakers and other craftsmen from across the country were employed. The chains worn by Madhubala in prison were also real. Even the statue of Lord Krishna was in real gold.
Tailors were brought from Delhi to stitch the costumes, specialists from Surat were hired to do the embroidery, goldsmiths from Hyderabad designed jewellery, craftsmen from Kolhapur worked on the crowns, ironsmiths from Rajasthan made the weaponry and shoemakers from Agra produced the royal footwear.
When completed, Asif is said to have got Rs 17 lakh per territory for the film when the going rate was Rs 3-4 lakh. The premiere invite was written in Urdu on red velvet and "stamped" with the seal of Akbar's royal court.

The premiere of Mughal-e-Azam was held at the then new,1,100-capacity Maratha Mandir cinema in Mumbai, The day before bookings for the film opened, a reported crowd of 100,000 gathered outside the Maratha Mandir to buy tickets. The tickets, the most expensive for a Bollywood film at that time, were dockets containing text, photographs and trivia about the film, and are now considered collector's items

This premiere was shown as a live event in Navketan's film Kala Bazar where Dev Anand does black marketing of the premiere shows tickets.
 The film ran for 100 weeks, was the biggest grosser of the 1960s and was finally beaten by the 1975 Sholay.
There had been three screen versions of the same story earlier also. Two starred one of Indian cinema’s top female stars, Sulochana, as Anarkali – in 1928 as a silent feature and then in 1935 as a talkie.

Forgotten Songs of HOLI

Holi is a festival of colours. It is an inseparable part of Indian culture and, Bollywood never misses a chance to infuse the ‘Holi factor’ in the form of dance numbers with stars going footloose and crazy. The first song of Holi was from the 1931 film ‘Ghar Ki Laxmi’. The Mukhdaa of the song goes like – “Mo Pe Daar Gayo Saari Rang Rang Ki Gaagar, Kaisa Dhokha Diya. . .”. This and many other songs of that era are now lost.
When we talk about the songs of the 30s and 40s how can we forget the great K L Sehgal.  He was an institution, with no parallel in the entire heritage of Hindi film music.Here I have taken a Non-film song of Sehgal on Holi. It was recorded in 1933.

                                         k.l.saigal..hori ho vraj dulare..geet.1933-34

.I present a song from this very first decade of Hindi films – a song from film ‘Aurat’ from 1940. ‘Aurat’ is a magnum opus by producer-director Mehboob, a much-celebrated film of its era.

Song of Aurat 1940

In the 50s many Holi songs were picturised. Almost all the Top stars of that time wanted one Holi song in his or her film. Nargis sang a Holi song in the 1950 film Jogan, sung by young Geeta Dutt. In this Holi song, Geeta Dutt’s honey and sugar voice ooze masti in full measure. With music by Bulo C Rani, Jogan’s bhajans became the benchmark for decades to come.

Song of Jogan 1950

India’s first technicolour film Aan exploited the colourful festival of Holi to fully utilize its highly expensive use of 16mm Gevacolour. Jai Tilak (Dilip Kumar) plays Holi with Mangala (Nimmi), a simple village girl. As he throws away her scarf in the melee, it mistakenly lands on the tempestuous and arrogant princess Rajshree (Nadira) who is touring the city on her royal elephant, making her assume something else!

Song of Aan (1953)

Another popular song was picturised on Dilip Kumar with Meena Kumari in the 1960 film Kohinoor

Song of Kohinoor 1960

There is no Holi song picturised on Dev Anand but there is one Holi song where Dev Anand was not playing but  out looking a Holi dance, The song is from the 1953 film Rahi

Song of Rahi (1953)

 This song is from “Maashooka” (1953). This song is sung by Suraiyya, Mukesh and chorus. Shailendra is the lyricist. Music is composed by Roshan.

Only the audio of this song is available. Seeing that Suraiyya and Mukesh had acted in this movie, it is easy to guess that the song was picturised on themselves.

Song of Maashooka” (1953)

Another memorable Holi song of the 50s is this song from 1957 film Mother India. Sung by Shamshad Begum, one of the top most singers of the 50s. The song captures Radha (Nargis) and Shamu (Raaj Kumar) in their happier times

Song of Mother India 1957

A romantic Holi song composed by Hemant Kumar and picturised on the elegant Bina Rai and the princely Pradeep Kumar. Talk about Holi compositions with a touch of the classical and this song from Durgesh Nandini which had some great music will be remembered for sure.

Song of Durgesh Nandini (1956)

Legendary filmmaker V Shantaram cast his wife Sandhya in this unusual role where she plays both the real and the fantasy characters. In the backdrop of Holi, this song has one of the most remarkable solo dance sequences performed by Sandhya, where she role plays both Radha and Shyam.

Song of Navrang (1959)

Shashi Kapoor - The Man who made many Meaningful Films not Money

Shashi Kapoor spent all his earnings from commercial potboilers in producing memorable films like “Junoon”, “Kalyug”, “Vijeta”  " Utsav" and  “36 Chowringhee Lane”. under his banner Filmvalas. All of these films were critically acclaimed but were commercially unsuccessful. The last film under this Banner was Ajooba starring Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor was a disaster.
Shashi Kapoor and his wife, Jennifer Kendal, wanted to make accessible arthouse films. They decided to start their own banner, The name was inspired by “Shakespeare Wallah", the title given to Shashi Kapoor’s father-law Geoffrey Kendal. The first film under their banner Film Valas was "Junoon" released in 1978. The film was directed by Shyam Benegal. The film is based on Ruskin Bond's fictional novella, A Flight of Pigeons, set around the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The film's soundtrack was composed by Vanraj Bhatia and cinematography by Govind Nihalani. The film was critically acclaimed and got many Awards. Won National Film Awards for Best Feature Film, Best Cinematography and Best Audiography. The film was an average in Box office. Junoon cost ₹34-odd lakh. It was a happy experience even though he didn’t make any money on it. Junoon eventually covered its investment. It would have even made a profit had he been a good businessman.
After Junoon came Kalyug and 36 Chowringhee Lane both released in 1981. Aparna (Sen) came to him with the story. He loved the script, and he wanted Shyam Benegal to direct it, but she said she was going to direct the film. That was a suicidal film—it was in English, made for between ₹ 18-24 lakh. (Its) cinematographer Ashok Mehta wasn’t cheap to work with. Vanraj Bhatia gave the music—whatever was state-of-the-art had to be used. He never compromised with the budget.
Kalyug was released on 24th July 1981. It was known as a modern-day version of the Indian epic Mahabharat, depicting an archetypal conflict between rival business houses. Kalyug went on to win the Filmfare Award for Best Film in 1982. The film was not a flop but recovered its cost.
Vijeta was the next film of this banner but Utsav was also planned simultaneously. Girish Karnad had written a great script. Shashi wanted Amitabh (Bachchan) to play the part he eventually played. But Amitabh couldn’t do the role. The movie got postponed because of dates. In January 81, Shashi went to Delhi for a film festival, where he met Dilbagh Singh, chief of air staff of the Indian Air Force. The Air Force was celebrating its golden jubilee. Dilbagh Singh said I will give you whatever you want to make a film promoting the Air Force. Govind (Nihalani) too wanted to do something on the Air Force. Vijeta happened overnight. The shooting started in April. The Air Force provided the facilities, but Shashi paid for the film. The film was once again an average earner. It got Filmfare award for Best Cinematographer, Best Editing and best sound recording.
Utsav released in 1984 started on a disastrous note. A set near Udupi in Karnataka was blown off in a cyclone. The income-tax department raided Rekha on the first day of the shoot. It cost ₹2 crore, though it was originally supposed to be about ₹ 1.2 crores. Utsav also had an English version, so there were two takes of everything. Shashi dubbed the film in London. His wife was in a hospital at the time (Jennifer Kendal was suffering from cancer, and died in London in 1984).
Shashi Kapoor was financially wiped out by Utsav. Instead of filling his coffers, it worked him into a completely negative zone. He was in debt, he now wanted to make a commercial film to wipe out his debts. He started Ajooba with Amitabh and Rishi Kapoor this time he directed the film. The film was made in Russian also. This film was produced in association with Gorky Film Studio in Moscow. There are several Russian stars whose speech is not in sync with Hindi dialogues. Supposedly Amitabh Bachchan worked in this film gratis, as a favour to his longtime collaborator and friend Shashi Kapoor. The film had a budget of ₹80 million, which was amongst the highest at the time.
In India, the film flopped at the box office, despite managing to do a net business of ₹45 million. Later, by selling the satellite rights Shashi Kapoor able to recover all his investment and subsequently it became an earner as of today. In contrast, the film was a financial success in the Soviet Union, where it was released in two parts. It was the last successful collaboration between the Indian and Soviet film industries.
Shashi Kapoor's son Kunal Kapoor said in an interview "Ajooba wasn’t and isn’t a good film. We didn’t let him make another one after that. We were so much in debt. Sanjna (Kunal Kapoor’s sister) was still a child. Karan (his brother) and I were supporting the house. I started making commercials. We are all bad businessmen. We are brilliant at spending money".

Song of Junoon 1978

Song of Kalyug 1981

Song of Vijeta 1982

Song of Utsav 1984

Song of Ajooba 1991

Ghulam Mohammed’ - The man who gave the Immortal Music of Pakeezah

 The music of Pakeezah by the late Ghulam Mohammed was a benchmark score. Arriving bang in the midst of the peak era of R. D. Burman and Kishore Kumar, He died on 17 March 1968, four years before his magnum opus, Pakeezah (1972) was released. The film was started in 1958 but got delayed and finally released after 14 years.
When Pakeezah was resumed in 1969, many exhibitors suggested Kamal Amrohi to change the music according to the then famous trend and style. To this, Amrohi said that he would have readily done this if only Ghulam Mohammed was still breathing alive. But, now he cannot betray a man, who gave him such melodious songs, after his unexpected and untimely death. So he kept his music intact but used fewer songs as planned to keep up with the fast-changing times.
Ghulam Mohammad composed 9 songs of this film by the time the film shooting started in 1960. In fact, the first song "Inhi Logo Ne Le Liya Dupatta Mera" was picturised. Earlier the film was planned in Black & White but due to the delay and change of trend, the film shot in colour. The black & white version of the song was never used, but many of the shots are extremely similar to the final version. Notice how different young Lata’s voice sounds in this song compared to parts of the soundtrack recorded years later. Even more, interestingly, Inhi Logon Ne was originally taken from the film Himmat (1941) in a version sung by none other than Shamshad Begum!
The movie Pakeezah itself is pure cinematic magic–Kamal Amrohi was notorious for his artistry and attention to detail. Pakeezah’s breath-taking production design, Ghulam Muhammed’s haunting semi-classical thumris, 
Did you know the beautiful Mohammed Rafi-Lata Mangeshkar duet, Chalo Dildar Chalo (raga Pahadi), was actually also recorded as a female solo? Intended for use as a dancing number, the fascinating solo version was cut from both the film and record releases, 
One index of Ghulam Mohammed’s creativity is the melodic variety within his songs. Given the brevity of a film song, it is quite usual for every antaraa to have the same tune. But this base case is extremely unusual for Ghulam Mohammed. His songs rarely have a repeated melody throughout. If there are three antaraas, one of them is usually different from the other two; occasionally, all three are different from each other. “Dhadakate Dil ki Tamanna ho” from Shama (1961) has three antaraas with two tunes among them; Pakeezah’s “Mausam Hai Aashiqaanaa” has four antaraas with three different tunes among them.

Song of Pakeezah 1972

Song of Pakeezah 1972

Song of Pakeezah 1972

Song of Pakeezah 1972

Song of Pakeezah 1972

Song of Pakeezah 1972

The Undying Appeal of the Songs of Golden Era

People say that good music is not being created nowadays but that's not correct, every now and then a good song pop up but these songs have no shelf life. These songs are without soul. Today's composers and lyricists shun the silences that needed for the original thought. Today's music makers believe in creating Hit songs rather creating great art.
In the Golden Era, there was a desire to make tunes of lasting values. To achieve that they were always played with the fresh idea and experimenting with new instruments and sounds. Singers were also putting great effort to cultivate original expressions.
If we look back and see that in the first four decades of cinema and its music (1931-1970), some 4,400 Hindi films were released with about 36,000 songs in them, giving us an average of over 8 songs per film. All this just highlights the importance we have attached to our film music.
For your information, Indrasabha released in1932 remains a film with the highest number of songs in a film with no less than 69 tracks. 
Here is a representation of a few films and the number of songs that were embedded into them in the first decade of Indian filmdom:

• Satyawadi Raja Harishchandra (1931/27 songs)
• Chatra Bakavali (1932/49 songs)
• Gulru Zarina (1932/33 songs)
• Muflis Ashiq (1932/32 songs)
• And Shaadi Ki Raat (1935/35 songs) 

This mood spilt over somewhat into the 1950s, with Jogan(1950/15 songs), Albela (1951/12 songs), Sansaar(1951/14 songs), Baiju Bawra (1952/13 songs), Anarkali (1953/12 songs), Nagin (1954/13 songs), and so on, with ten songs being quite a common occurrence. This number has been going progressively down over the decades. In recent years it was in Hum Apke Hain Kaun released in 1994 had 14 songs.
Over the centuries, we have had bhajans and kirtans in homes and in mohallas, qawwalis in dargahs, and plays based on epics such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata in full measure. All these have involved music, as well as folk songs, theatre, puppetry, bidaayi geet, and a wide variety of region-centric street performances. The music is in our blood. Indian films cannot be liked without music.
Since cinema is a very powerful audio-visual medium, we must consider the film song in its visual context too. It is here that beautiful and talented people can elevate the melody, as so many did. Meena Kumari, Nutan, Nargis, Vyjayantimala, Madhubala, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor, Dharmendra, Suchitra Sen, Shashi Kapoor.etc.
Hindi film songs became so popular among the cine-goers, it attracted more and more audience to cinema theatres. The filmmaker took the talented music directors and lyricists to create songs to attract more public to the cinema. Film song which is packaged as products that not only promote the sale of the film but stand alone as commercial products. 
The songs of the Golden era are so expressive and passionate that they refresh the mood and tired senses. Some of the songs are heart touching, some of them are witty, some are amusing you name the mood and you will find a good old song.
The time is called golden era where style and subtleness ruled, and when the renowned music directors legends like S.D Burman, Naushad, Salil Chowdhary, Shankar-Jaikishan, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Madan Mohan, O.P.Nayyar, Chitragupt, R D Burman composed magical numbers. Every significant composer from Hindi cinema of that era has left behind a remarkable footprint of tunes based on classical ragas, songs that just refuse to perish, for they have no expiry date.
Singers such as Saigal, Mohammad Rafi, Geeta Dutt, Shamshad Begum, Suraiya, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Suman Kalyanpur, Manna Dey, Talat Mehmood and many more ruled. The fact is that listening to old Hindi songs in which the lyrics are so wonderful, they are the best medicine for the listeners. 
The lyrics of these old songs also played an important role. The lyrics were penned with the simplicity of words and expression, speaking about the deep spiritual truths about our existence and surroundings. There was pleasure in songs – whether a patriotic song, romantic song or devotional songs, they all celebrated life. Solos expressed the transience of love and life. Lyricists such as Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Neeraj, Anand Bakshi, Sahir Ludhiyanvi, Shakeel Badayuni, Pradeep, Kaifi Azami and Gulzar penned remarkable, soul-stirring poetries some of which were replete with clichés and metaphors contributing to the golden era.
Have you ever thought, why these songs were so popular?. Why hasn’t their popularity collapsed? Young contestants often sing old songs in competitions, even if the judges too are young people, and many of these contests are shown on television. At parties, many young people love the work of Madan Mohan, SD Burman, OP Nayyar, Sahir, Shakeel, Mukesh, Shamshad, Rafi, Lata, Asha, Geeta and Talat, even though they were born decades after many of these giants passed on. Get into a taxi in Delhi or in Mumbai, chances are the driver is listening to a radio program of retro Hindi film songs.
Here are some of these Immortal songs of the Golden Era

Anmol Ghadi (1946)

Song of Mahal 1949

Song of Andaz (1949) 

Song of Barsat (1949)

Song of Anarkali (1953)

Song of Taxi Driver (1954)

Song of Shree 420 (1955)

Song of Shree C. I. D. (1956)

Song of Janam Janam Ke Phere (1957)

Song of Solva Saal (1958)

Song of Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi (1959)

Song of Barsaat Ki Raat (1960)

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