Do You Know How Film Producer Subhash Ghai Convinced Dilip Kumar And Rajkumar To Act In His Film Saudagar?

Dilip Kumar and Rajkumar had come together on screen in just one film Paigam.  In this film Rajkumar had played the role of Dilip Kumar’s elder brother and between the two they had a major disparity. Dilip Kumar had given his best performance as always but media portrayed the new comer Rajkumar as a better actor in the film. After the success of this film Rajkumar also became a big star like Dilip Kumar but after this film the two stalwart had not come on the screen together again.

Reason was due to ego clash. While Dilip Kumar during those days was considered to be a superstar, Rajkumar was no less and he went on to become the star of the stars. Therefore, every film maker or director wanted to cast both these actors in their film but they could not convince them.  Actually many filmmakers wanted to films with Dilip Kumar and Rajkumar but it was not feasible due to their differences,  however Subhash Ghai the film director producer took a big decision to cast them together and had managed to convince them to be a part of the film Saudagar.

How did Subhash Ghai get them to act in his film?. The script of the film was made keeping the two actors in mind with their personality but to persuade them it was one herculean task and he was in a dilemma how to?  But he was adamant that Saudagar will only have Dilip Kumar and Rajkumar in the pivotal roles and no other actor.   How did he fulfil his desire and how did this miracle happen that these two great actors who were not ready to act together in a film had agreed to act in Subhash Ghai’s film?  

Subhash Ghai had already cast Dilip Kumar in two of his earlier films, Vidhata and Karma, hence he had good relations with him and he had full faith that Dilip Kumar would not refuse him and when he narrated the script to Dilip Kumar, the latter immediately agreed to do the film. Now the next step was to go to Raj Kumar’s house , but it wasn’t so difficult as when he heard the script he had agreed immediately but wanted to know who was going to do the other protagonist’s role as his friend?    Subhash Ghai tactfully handled this question and told him how he looked up to him as one of the greatest actor in Hindi Cinema but other than him there was just one more actor who could star parallel to him and it was none other than Dilip Kumar who like him is a great actor, and would fit in the role most convincingly opposite him. Rajkumar also agreed that there was no other great actor whom he would have a competition with and he was apt for the role and asked Subhash Ghai to sign Dilip Kumar and that he would do the film along with him.

In this way Subhash Ghai had handled this desire of casting both very diplomatically,  praising the actors individually and the actors surpassed in their roles as two best friends in the film who latter become enemies and at the end reestablished their eternal friendship on screen and it went on to become a box office super hit..