Goonj Uthi Shehnai

A few years earlier, director Vijay Bhatt had cast two unknown actresses in his film Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1954): Ameeta in the heroine role and Asha Parekh in the child's role. He decided to make Asha a heroine in Goonj Uthi Shehnai, but after a few days of filming, he fired her claiming she wasn't star material and hired Ameeta (who cut her fee in half to secure the role) to replace Asha in his film, since she was just coming off of Nasir Hussain's hit film Tumsa Nahin Dekha (1957) with Shammi Kapoor. But Hussain didn't want to work with Ameeta again, complaining that she had never fit his concept of a heroine and hired Asha for Dil Deke Dekho (1959), which made her a star. Although Goonj Uthi Shehnai was a hit, Ameeta didn't become a major star and her career ended in 1968, while Asha went on to become a major star, an award-winning actress, and a Bollywood icon . Goonj Uthi Shehnai's leading man Rajendra Kumar Tuli, who would later work with Asha in the hit film Gharana (1961) would forever refer to her as "Bhagyalakshmi" (meaning "the-ever-lucky-one"), since he saw her go from an unknown to a movie star in a heartbeat.