Rajesh Khanna

1942–2012

Forty films here, and between 1969 and 1971 he had seventeen consecutive hits, which nobody in Hindi cinema has matched before or since.

Bandhan, in 1969, catches him a moment before the thing everyone remembers about him was true. His songs in it are sung by Mahendra Kapoor. Aradhana came out the same year and fixed Kishore Kumar as his voice so completely that the pairing became one identity; here that has not happened yet, and he sounds like somebody else.

Bandhan is also Narendra Bedi's first film as a director, produced by G. P. Sippy - and four years earlier Sippy had bought a story from the same Narendra Bedi for Mere Sanam, whose screenplay was written by Bedi's father, the Urdu writer Rajinder Singh Bedi. All three films are here.

Shehzada, in 1972, comes with a producer's anecdote worth keeping. Surinder Kapoor said afterwards that Khanna "was truly of a princely disposition" - that he started shooting without ever discussing his fee, and told them they could settle it once the film was made. Kapoor's banner was established on the strength of it, and his sons went on to make Mr. India.

Joroo Ka Ghulam, the same year, is his third film with Nanda after Ittefaq and The Train. Ittefaq is here too, and the pair are worth watching back to back: a murder story on one set with no songs at all, and then a farce with five, the same two people in both.

By Hum Dono in 1985 he is playing twins in a remake of a Telugu comedy - the other end of a career that began with everything going right at once.

Dates and credits from Wikidata.