Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary today. (Express archive photo)
Bollywood stars Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan got married on June 3, 1973, and are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary on Saturday. Amitabh and Jaya met each other for the first time on the sets of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Guddi, which became a defining film in Jaya’s career, but Amitabh dropped out from the movie. Even though Amitabh wasn’t her co-star in the film, he won Jaya’s heart with his ‘caring’ and ‘sensitive’ nature.
Jaya had earlier revealed in the 2002 book ‘To Be or Not to Be: Amitabh Bachchan’ that she was ‘secretly’ happy about Big B’s casting in Guddi. “When I heard that Amitabh Bachchan would be the hero of Guddi, I was secretly pleased. He was different and would be perfect for a film which did not deal with the usual hero-heroine romantic subject,” she shared.
But, to her displeasure, Amitabh was dropped from the film due to date issues as the actor had become busy by the time Guddi went into production. However, the official reason for his ouster from the movie was that Mukherjee needed a lesser-known face for the role and Amitabh had become popular after Anand’s release.
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Amitabh would often tease Jaya that she got him removed from the film and his jokes would leave her upset. “Amitabh would, of course, kid around that I had got him thrown out of the project and I would get upset about such jokes since I did not find them funny,” she recalled. But she was won over by his heartwarming gesture of coming for her graduation day at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) after driving for five hours.
“I was extremely touched when he drove five hours to the Institute to be at the convocation ceremony on my graduation day,” Jaya shared while adding, “Amitabh would gift me expensive, heavy Kanjeevaram saris. Funnily enough most of the saris were white with a purple border, purple a colour which does not suit me.” Jaya Bachchan wore a few of those sarees in their film 1973 film Abhimaan.
As their love grew for each other, the couple looked for ways to spend more time with each other and this is why Jaya Bachchan agreed to star in Prakash Mehra’s 1973 film Zanjeer.
Jaya revealed that no actress was ready to do Zanjeer since it was not a substantial role. Even she would not have done it had Amitabh not been there in the film. She shared, “Actually several heroines had turned down Zanjeer. Salim-Javed had asked me to step in. I had been hesitant since there was not much of a role for me. That is when Amit told me quietly, ‘I believe you are refusing to act with me.’ I relented and accepted. If it had been any other actor, I would not have done Zanjeer. Frankly, it was an excuse to be with him and if my participation helped the project, so be it.”
After Zanjeer’s success, Amitabh and Jaya wanted to go for a vacation but the former didn’t get permission from his parents. They insisted that he gets married first and then take a vacation with Jaya.
Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri in film Zanjeer. (Photo: Express Archive)
Jaya narrated the story on her granddaughter Navya’s podcast, “We had to go on a trip after the success of the film we did together (Zanjeer). But one day, he called me and said, ‘There’s a problem. My parents won’t allow us to go on a holiday and if we want to go, we must get married.’ So I said we were already planning to get married in October, let’s get it done in June. But you will have to speak to my parents. He called my father, who was not very happy, since he never wanted me to get married.”
Amitabh and Jaya finally got married on June 3, 1973, in a simple ceremony at the house of Jaya’s godmother in Mumbai. The couple was blessed with daughter Shweta in 1974 and son Abhishek in 1976.