Rajesh Khanna was one of the biggest stars in the late 1960s and early 1970s, holding the record for 17 consecutive hits at the box office. During this peak of his career, he was so popular that he started signing films without even reading their scripts.
The superstar once signed a film for Rs 5 lakh as an advance, but after reading the script, he realized it was “terrible.” Despite this, he didn’t want to back out because he was promised Rs 9 lakh for the film, a huge sum in the early 1970s. He agreed to do the film, but only after his chosen writers rewrote the script.
In Yasser Usman’s book, Rajesh Khanna: The Untold Story of India’s First Superstar, an interesting story is shared about Rajesh Khanna’s decision to sign a film. At the time, he was trying to buy his sea-facing bungalow, Aashirwaad, from the previous owner, actor Rajendra Kumar, and had to pay a significant amount for the property. Around this time, he was offered a film by producer MMA Chinnappa Devar from Chennai, based on a story about a man and his pet elephants, which would later become Haathi Mere Saathi. Rajesh agreed to the film because of the large sum offered, signing on without reading the script.
After Rajesh Khanna had been showing off his cash, he finally received the script for the film and was shocked and disappointed by it. Realizing the script wasn’t up to standard, he called in the famous writing duo Salim-Javed to rewrite it. At the time, Salim-Javed were still unknown and working as salaried employees at Sippy Films, but they agreed to help.
Salim Khan, of the Salim-Javed duo, shared with Yasser that Rajesh Khanna was initially excited about the large payment when he signed the film. However, after reading the script and learning about Devar’s Tamil films, he got scared. Salim recalled Rajesh telling him, “This is a terrible script. I could have rejected it outright, but I took a huge amount.” Salim believed Rajesh needed money to buy a house and a car, which is why he agreed to a sum higher than his usual market price, which was Rs 9 lakh, including a Rs 5 lakh signing amount—Rs 4 lakh more than his usual fee at that time.
Salim-Javed completely rewrote the script, keeping only the concept of the pet elephants, and thus Haathi Mere Saathi was born. The film became a huge success, maintaining Rajesh Khanna’s unbroken streak of hits and giving Salim-Javed one of their early successes as well.
