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When Rajesh Khanna paraded Rs 5 lakh signing amount, signed a ‘terrible’ film without reading script as he ‘needed the money’

Rajesh Khanna was on a hit streak when he once got Rs 5 lakh cash as signing amount for a film. He took it without even reading the script.

Rajesh Khanna took a huge signing amount even before he read the script. (Photo: Express Archives)

Rajesh Khanna was the biggest superstars in the late 1960s and early 1970s and once held the record of delivering 17 consecutive hits at the box office. It was in the middle of this streak when Rajesh was enjoying his superstardom that he appeared to be signing films without reading their scripts. Rajesh once signed a film by taking Rs 5 lakh cash as the signing amount, but later when he read the script, he realised it was “terrible.” The actor did not want to back out because he was promised Rs 9 lakh for the film, which was massive amount in the early 1970s and decided to do the film anyway, but only after his selected writers reworked the script.

In Yasser Usman’s book, Rajesh Khanna: The Untold Story of India’s First Superstar, the anecdote is recalled in the context of Rajesh trying to buy his sea-facing bungalow named Aashirwaad. As the bungalow was owned by yesteryear star Rajendra Kumar, Rajesh had to give a handsome amount to lay his claim on the property. It was around the same time that he was offered a film from a producer in Chennai named MMA Chinnappa Devar. This was a film based on the story of a man and his pet elephants, which would later be known as Haathi Mere Saathi. Rajesh said yes because he was offered a large amount for the film, and he said yes without reading the script.

In the same book, actor Dheeraj Kumar has been quoted as saying that Kaka walked around with his suitcase full of cash and showed it anyone who was willing to take a look. “Those days everyone in the film industry was talking about the signing amount of Rs 5 lakh that Kaka had received. This was huge money. I hadn’t ever seen Rs 5 lakh in cash myself. One day, while shooting at Famous Studios, Kaka called me to his room. He told me to open a suitcase with Rs 5 lakh in cash. For days, he walked around with that suitcase an showed its contents to many people,” he said.

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Soon after Rajesh had been showing off his cash to others, he got the script of the film and he was in for a shock. He was shocked and disappointed and called Salim-Javed to come in and rework the script. Salim-Javed were yet to make a name for themselves in those days and were still working as salaried employees at Sippy Films, and they agreed.

Salim Khan, of Salim-Javed, told Yasser, “He took a lot of money when he signed the film. When he read the script later and got to know about Devar’s Tamil films, he got scared. He called me and said, ‘This is a terrible script. I could have rejected it outright but I have taken a huge amount.’ I think he needed money to buy a house and a new car. So he took more than his market price. I think it was Rs 9 lakh, which was Rs 4 lakh more than his market price at that time. And Rs 5 lakh was the signing amount.”

Salim-Javed changed everything in the script, and only retained the pet elephants, and thus Haathi Mere Saathi was born, which proved to maintain Kaka’s unbroken streak of hits and gave Salim-Javed one of the earlier hits.

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Soon after, he bought the bungalow and his father named it Aashirwaad, so even if people sent him hate mail, they would write it with a blessing, ‘Rajesh Khanna. Aashirwaad’.

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