50 years of Chupke Chupke: What made Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan and Sharmila Tagore's comedy a cult classic

Filmmaker Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s breezy comedy of errors, Chupke Chupke (1975), which completes 50 years today, is nothing less than a cult classic. A Hindi adaptation of the Bengali film Chhadmabeshi (1971) is timeless for its simplicity, witty dialogues, situational comedy, and evergreen songs. Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Sharmila Tagore, Asrani, Jaya Bachchan and Om Prakash make up the ensemble cast.

The plot follows a botany professor, Parimal Tripathi (Dharmendra), whose wife Sulekha (Sharmila Tagore) is in awe of her brother-in-law Raghav’s intellect (Om Prakash). A jealous Parimal takes it upon himself to break this aura, by fooling Raghav. He poses as a driver, Pyaare Mohan, who is obsessed with the purity of the Hindi language. Amitabh plays Parimal’s friend, an English professor named Sukumar.

Amitabh-Jaya insisted on joining the film’s cast

Director Hrishikesh Mukherjee had originally imagined having new faces playing Sukumar and Vasudha. But when Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan heard about Chupke Chupke, they insisted on being cast and even chose to forgo payment. Hrishikesh Mukherjee said the roles were too small, but they didn’t mind it.

Shot in Jalsa

Amitabh Bachchan once shared that the song Chupke Chupke Chal Re Purbaiya and a few other scenes were shot at his current Mumbai residence, Jalsa. The bungalow was previously under the ownership of producer NC Sippy.

Language conundrum

Much to Jijaji’s exasperation (Om Prakash), Dharmendra’s Pyaaremohan is fluent in pure Hindi. However, in the latter half of the story, Pyaare stammers and ends up speaking in Urdu instead. To this Jijaji observed, “Gusse mein naacheez haklata hai aur Urdu bolta hai.” This dialogue was spontaneously added by Dharmendra.

Hrishikesh’s ire

Hrishikesh Mukherjee was quite a taskmaster on set. For the song Sa Re Ga Ma, music composer S D Burman had recorded three antaras (verses). But the director snipped the second antara because he was furious with Dharmendra reporting late for the song’s shoot. In another case of Dharmendra’s tardiness, Hrishikesh Mukherjee chose to retain a shot of the actor adjusting his trousers after exiting the washroom as “punishment.”

Chupke Chupke remake that wasn’t

In 2013, there were reports about filmmaker Umesh Shukla working on an adaptation with writer Sajid and Farhad Samji. Paresh Rawal was set to star. Then, in 2019, it was reported that producers Bhushan Kumar and Luv Ranjan had acquired the rights to the original title and would remake it with actor Rajkummar Rao in the lead. There were also rumours of filmmaker Farah Khan returning to direction with actor Varun Dhawan playing Pyaare. But none of these movies have materialised.