Blast from the Past: Stardust, 1973

My mother - one of the earliest fans of Stardust - not only read the magazine religiously since its inception some time in 1971 but even bound all her issues in two fat volumes, for posterity. She did not know what this rather odd bit of archiving would do in the future. She, obviously, had not bargained for a son who had inherited her movie genes.

So, I was browsing through one of the volumes (far more interesting than TV!) and put together the following gems!

January 1973:

Raakhee-Gulzar Marriage Off!

Reports industry speculation that Gulzar and Jaya Bhaduri may be having an affair. Scotches it by reporting that Jaya calls the director Gulzar-bhai. And finally reveals that Jaya's secretary - one Susheela Kamath - is the reason behind the break-up, with whom Gulzar has met for long 'story sessions' for Jaya's films (without Jaya)!

Apparently, Gulzar isn't very keen on the marriage to a more famous Raakhee in the first place. And wanted her to wash her hands off films before getting married.

Four months after this issue, Stardust did a photo-feature on the Raakhee-Gulzar wedding (May '73).

March 1973:

Stop Telling Those Lies About Us: Amitabh

Lie 1: Jaya was married to one Bhaskar Chowdhury, a FTII classmate.

Lie 2: She is the mother of two kids, trying to pay her husband Rs 10 Lakhs to divorce her!

Lie 3: Amitabh was using his relationship with Jaya to further his career.

Other snippets from the story: Amitabh has gone on a couple of dates with Mumtaz. Goes out with Sheila Jones, a friend from his Calcutta days. Had mentioned in an interview that he would not like to marry an actress or career-woman.

Three months after this story, Amitabh and Jaya married (June '73) and Stardust duly carried a photo-feature titled "Guddi becomes Mrs Lambuji!"

April 1973

From a column called "Everything You Always Wanted to Know..." in which readers ask questions ranging from Dev Anand's possible cosmetic surgery to rumours of a Rishi-Dimple love affair on the sets of Bobby. The answers are so uniformly off the truth (and bland!) that I am convinced that the questions are manufactured to be scandalous and the answers deliberately innocuous to keep the stars happy.

A sample:

Reader's Question: Now that Asha Bhonsle has broken off with OP Nayyar, has she started lavishing her attention on RD Burman? The other day, I saw them driving by in his car and I did think they looked like a teenage couple in love. I wonder if you know more than I do.

Answer: Does seeing them in the same car imply a raging romance between them? He might just have been giving her a lift after a song recording... True, they have been spotted together quite often... perhaps you have forgotten that Asha is a mother of not just teenagers but adult children herself. Surely at her age, she won't behave like a love-struck school-girl with a man who's a little older than her own son?

May 1973:

End of A Seven-Year Romance

Chronicles the end of the Rajesh Khanna-Anju Mahendru romance through an interview with both separately but the answers intercutting like a conversation.

"Dimple is a clever little girl. Rajesh and I met her together for the first time. Then we were Rajesh Uncle and Anju Aunty to her..."

"Anju used to deliberately snub Dimple. You know how Dimple is. Young, sweet and carefree..."

"Rajesh took the step first. If only he had told me himself that he wanted to marry another girl, I would have understood..."

"I had intended to go to Anju on my return from Khandala and tell her simply that everything was finished between us. But when I met my driver, he told me that memsaab asked him to give me a message - that if I stepped through her gates, she would ask the gurkha to throw me out..."

There's more to come... Don't go away!