Even After 50 Days Of Shoot And Rs. 10 Lakhs Spent, No One Knew Who Would Play Anarkali In Mughal-E-Azam

The entire nation knows and loves K.Asif's Magnum Opus Mughal-E-Azam. One of the biggest films of its times and a film that is still talked about and referenced even today!

With a stellar cast and performances, the film made its way to the pages of the history of Indian cinema. Dilip Kumar in the role of Saleem, Prithviraj Kapoor in the role of Jalaalludin Mohammad Akbar and the one and the only, the Venus of the Indian silver screen Madhubala in the role of Anarkali.

The supporting cast of the film too was hugely popular with actress Durga Khote essaying the towering role of Jodhabai, Murad played the dignified Maan Singh and Ajit immortalised the role of the Rajput friend of prince Saleem and not to forget Nigar Sultana who played the hard and ambitious plotter to perfection.

But did you know, this wasn’t the first cast to be finalised for the film and earlier it was Tej Sapru, Chandramohan and Nargis who were locked for the roles initially in the year 1944. Eventually, Dilip Kumar replaced Sapru, Chandramohan was replaced by Prithviraj Kapoor. Nargis was still in the cast. According to late publicist Bunny Reuben, Nargis had a bitter fall out with Dilip Kumar and decided she would not work with him anymore and hence backed out of the film. Therefore now, there was no replacement to be found for Anarkali’s role for which Nargis had been cast.

The media then started making a hue and cry about the entire matter. Asif had already finished shooting for 50 days!! His dialogues were in place, the rehearsals were going on and scenes were discussed. But all this while there was no trace of Anarkali. And who would play the character was a big question that loomed on the heads of one and all! Asif could not bring himself at peace until he found himself the right face for Anarkali’s character.

Therefore, according to the then media reports, at that time a search was launched for Anarkali with several girls being interviewed in Lucknow, Bhopal, Delhi and Hyderabad. There was a huge debate in the film press and finally, there was a report in the famous ‘Screen’ magazine that Nutan would be playing the role of Anarkali but she too backed out stating only Madhubala could do justice to Anarkali.

There were other reports of how Vijaylakshmi was being favoured by Dilip Kumar for the role and Begum Para was in the mind of K Asif for the face of Anarkali.

Already the year 1953 commenced and yet there was no one finalised for the role of Anarkali! It was reported that already Rs 10 lakhs were spent on the film in the course of 50 days and no one knew who would be Anarkali. And then finally, there were first reports of the role going to Madhubala.

Filmindia broke the news about how the role eventually had fallen in Madhubala’s lap, one of those actresses to be first named for the film.

There are so many stories that are there about how finally Madhubala was cast for the film that words seem to fall short. Well, the making of the most prestigious and costliest film of its times has a lot of tales laced around it. We will be bringing to you, such interesting tidbits and many more such stories.

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