Did you know this interesting trivia about Manmohan Desai’s 1977 blockbuster film, Amar Akbar Anthony?
“Anhoni ko honi kar de honi ko anahoni, Ek jagah jab jama hon teenon amar akbar anthony.” More than four decades later, Manmohan Desai’s Amar Akbar Anthony still continues to make us laugh and even shed a tear or two!
With an ambitious star cast headlined by Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, Vinod Khanna, Zeenat Aman, Neetu Kapoor and Shabana Azmi, the film revolves around three brothers who are separated in childhood and raised in different faiths.
Speaking about the 1977 film, who can forget the iconic scene where an inebriated Anthony (Amitabh Bachchan) applies medicine and bandage to his reflection in the mirror after his fight with the goons!
But do you guys know that Big B wrapped up this sequence in one take without director Manmohan Desai on the sets?
Well, it so happened that both Amitabh Bachchan and Manmohan Desai were shooting for two movies, Parvarish and Amar Akbar Anthony at the same time in RK Studios.
In Siddharth Bhatia’s book, ‘Amar Akbar Anthony: Masala, Madness and Manmohan Desai’, Amitabh Bachchan recalled, “I used to shoot one scene on one set, rush to the other one, change clothes, and shoot for the second movie. Manji was doing the same. There was a mirror scene planned but nothing had been discussed. He gave me some dialogues and went off. Suddenly, his assistants said, let us just shoot it while he is away. That was it. We set it up and I did it. I knew the dialogues but added a few lines of my own. It was all done in one take.”
Later, when Manmohan Desai watched this scene at a preview theatre, he was so impressed by the Bollywood superstar that he promised to cast him in every film of his thereafter.
Amitabh Bachchan and Manmohan Desai worked together on eight films- Amar Akbar Anthony, Naseeb, Coolie, Mard, Toofan, Parvarish, Suhaag and Desh Premee.
