Vijay Bhatt premiers Ram Rajya in the USA

In 1947, Bhatt toured the US with the twin objective of attending the premiere of ‘Ram Rajya’ over there and exploring co-production possibilities of a film on the life of Buddha. The script of Buddha was written in English by the late Shri Harindranath Chattopadhyay. He also carried with him the prints of ‘Bharat Milap’ and ‘Vikramaditya’ for private screenings.

The American premiere of Indian films was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, on May 5, 1947, with subsequent screenings on May 6 and 7, 1947, under the auspices of the Indian Society of America, of which Dr. Chandrashekhar was the President.

Towards the end of the premiere, an American girl approached Vijay Bhatt with this question:, “Why is it that Rama discarded his Seeta, even though he had accepted her chastity after the fire test (Agni Pariksha)?

“That is the difference between the Indian point of view and the Western point of view,” the filmmaker replied, adding, ” In the West, in Great Britain for example, a king left his kingdom for the sake of the woman he had married. Here, Rama left his wife for the sake of his subjects, some of whom had reservations about Seeta, although he loved her very much, and actually lived a life of a recluse afterwards.”

At the banquet that followed at the Hotel Waldorf Astoria, New York, the chief guest was Mr. Eric Johnston, the President of the American Motion Pictures Association of America presided, while Mr. Spyros P.Skouras, President of Twentieth Century Fox, as a guest of honour. On behalf of the hosts, he presented a scroll of honour to Vijay Bhatt.

Going around the famous studios of Hollywood, Vijubhai met a number of stars and filmmakers. These included then fifteen-year old Elizabeth Taylor, swimming beauty Esther Williams, funster Eddie Cantor and the future President of America, Ronald Reagan, who was shooting for “Voice Of The Turtle”.

However, Vijubhai’s proudest moment was at Paramount Studios, where he met the legendary maker of memorable epics, Cecil B. D’Mille. who wrote a message when the distinguished admirer sought his autograph. It read – “Greetings from one director who is still trying to make good pictures, to another director, who will make great ones long after I am gone.” The message, with his autograph is still cherished by the Bhatt family.

Vijay Bhatt takes Baiju Bawra to Russia

Vijay Bhatt even visited the Soviet Union in 1954 as a member of the first Indian film delegation. He had taken with him his film, “Baiju Bawra”, which was a great musical hit with exquisite “raaga” based songs tuned by Naushad. The story centered around a great musician of the medieval period, Baiju, who had a musical confrontation with the court musician of Emporer Akbar, the great Tansen.

Naushad had ingeniously used the playback singing of two eminent vocalists, the late Pandit D.V. Paluskar, who sang for Baiju, played by Bharat Bhushan and late Ustad Amir Khan, who sang for Tansen.

All songs of Baiju Bawra were immensely captivating. Right from the rehearsal stage, melody queen Lata Mangeshkar’s personal favourite was “Mohe bhool gaye sanvariya”.

Such was her love for good music, that on the day of the recording, she was running a high fever but went ahead and did it, although the director and the composer wanted her to rest that day. The result? A classic sad song that reflected the physical pain she was going through at that moment.

The Russians, who were then obsessed with the working class ideals, particularly liked the confrontation sequence in Vijubhai’s film. For them, it was the triumph of the fiery working class musician (Baiju) over the court musician (Tansen).

En route to Moscow, Vijay Bhatt along with eminent film personalities like Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, Nargis, Bimal Roy and Hrishikesh Mukherjee made a stop over at Switzerland as guests of the legendary entertainer Charlie Chaplin at his villa.