It’s not possible to discuss trivia and facts related to Mughal-e-Azam in a single story, so continuing from the first part of the story, here are a few more interesting facts about the movie Mughal-e-Azam
Expert tailors were hired from Delhi to stitch the costumes, experts from Surat-Khambayat were taken to work on the embroidery, Hyderabad goldsmiths were hired to make the jewellery, and Kohalpur craftsmen designed the crowns. For the war scenes, ironsmiths from Rajasthan were brought and extravagant footwear was purchased from Agra. 2000 camels, 4000 horses, and 8000 troops were used for the war scenes, and he hired real Indian army soldiers for the war scenes.
Prithviraj Kapoor was not doing many movies when K. Asif offered him the role of Akbar in Mughal-e-Azam. At first, he was reluctant but after signing the movie he fully dedicated himself to portraying the character of Akbar to perfection. He did voice modulation for the movie and for a scene, he walked barefoot on hot sand to make the scene realistic. He made the character of Akbar immortal with his powerful performance.
By the time, the shooting of the movie was finished; director K Asif had shot above 3 million feet of negative which were all kept in his editing table. It was a tiring and tedious task to edit out so much of negatives. The final running time of three hours long movie does not have almost half the songs and many shots and sequences which were shot.
About K. Asif, the director
Though Mughal-e-Azam remains one of the greatest and most iconic movies of Bollywood, the director K. Asif didn’t direct many movies in his life.
Asif was born in Etawah, Uttar Pradesh, and after growing up, he went to Bombay to work in movies and he wanted to direct movies. In 1945, he made his first movie Phool which was a big success at the box office. In 1944, he read an Urdu book Anarkali written by Syed Imtiaz Ali Taj. He wanted to make the movie with Chandramohan in the male lead and the then upcoming actress Nargis in the female lead. But the movie got shelved and he again started the movie with Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, and Nargis which was released in 1960. He started his next movie Love and God but sadly he died before the shooting of the movie could be completed.
