Amitabh Bachchan first gained stardom in his ‘angry young man’ era in the 1970s but unlike the adulation movie stars get today, Bachchan was completely ignored by the media at the time. In a 2017 blog, Bachchan shared that the film media had banned him assuming that he was responsible for the press ban during the Emergency era and thus, they refused to carry any of his photographs or interviews when almost all of his movies were superhits.
Bachchan shared that the photographers would put their cameras down when he attended any functions or premieres and sometimes, even his name was skipped from the credits in the magazines. In response, even the actor decided to ban the media from his film sets.
“Nothing was ever printed or written about me .. no coverage of any of my films or my works .. and no pictures if I was to attend a function. The photographers would put down their cameras on the platform where I stood and so long as I was there, they protested and never took a single photograph .. if there were to be a credit title description of a film .. for eg., say ‘Nastik’ .. it would be Hema Malini, (,) and Pran .. I was the comma in the film and so on ..” he shared.
Bachchan shared that it was during the press ban that one of his biggest hits, Deewaar, had released but the Best Actor trophy was awarded to Sanjeev Kumar for Aandhi. Bachchan was called to present the award to his rival. He shared that “many commentators of the time and rival media when talking to me, expressed opinion that the move was to deliberately humiliate me by performing this deed” but he never paid any attention to the naysayers.
He presented the award to Sanjeev Kumar as he respected the actor. And added that if Dilip Kumar did not win an award for Ganga Jamuna, which in his opinion was the greatest performance of the actor, then “main kis khet ki mooli hoon.. (Who am I in comparison?)”
As per the actor, this went on for almost 15 years until he met with the near fatal accident on the sets of Coolie. After the accident, one of the leading magazines of the time which had also banned him wrote a “sympathetic and compassionate piece” which came as a surprise for the actor. After he recovered he met with the editor of the magazine and asked why they printed a sympathetic piece for the actor. The response was an “emotional moment” for him.
“In his most forthright and honest manner he said .. ‘we were upset and annoyed with you, because of what you had done to the media, and we wanted you to fail .. but we did not want you to die .. and so we wrote this piece when you recovered’ .. It was an emotional moment and from then on we have been the normal best as before ..” he shared.
