Ameeta

Ameeta Biography

Ameeta – a beautiful face of Bollywood 1950’s and 1960’s is known best for the movie, Tumsa nahin dekha opposite Shammi Kapoor. The next two noted movies are Goonj ude shehanai (1959) and Mere Mehboob (1963), both opposite Rajendra Kumar. Despite getting such big breaks and promising career in Bollywood, she couldn’t capitalize the success of these movies and end up the career with B grade movies, a few supporting roles and lots of bitter experiences.

Quite co-incident, she became instrumental in placing two struggling actors of 1950’s to the top heroes of 1960’s - Rajendra Kumar and Shammi Kapoor, though both these movies were meant to life up her career. Yet she couldn’t gain from those big breaks, ending in supporting and B grade roles opposite Dhara Singh and comic actors. She left the industry in the late 1960’s doing supporting role for Haseena Maan Jaayegi and she even made an attempt to groom her daughter’s career in Bollywood during 1990’s, though missed the task completely.

Ameeta debut movies in the year 1952, doing a bit role for Anmol Sahara. Her pretty face and confident very soon brought many supporting roles of main stream. She played second heroine role in Munimji (1955) and Shirin Farhad (1956). But she made a bad mistake by rejecting the supporting role in Mother India as she felt that she won’t enough space as it’s a Nargis movie. The role was earlier rejected by Mala Sinha also. It finally went to Kumkum. But same year Filmistan Studios’ owner Tolaram Jalan relaunched her with Tumsa Nahin Dekha (1957) which still remains her most successful movie. Though the movie was to highlight Ameeta, Shammi was benefited and later he became top romantic hero of 1960’s. The movie was directed by Nasir Hussain. But he later promoted Asha Parekh instead of Ameeta.

Same is the case of Rajendra Kumar’s first hit movie, Goonj ude shehanai and biggest hit, Mere mehboob where Ameeta played Sadhana’s friend’s role. Though director of the movie highlighted beautiful face of Ameeta by using luminous Technicolor close-up shots and beautiful photography, it was Sadhana who stole the show. Ameeta could only win a Filmfare nomination in supporting actress category. She was starred in lead role opposite Mehbood in Chota Nawab. But the movie was noticed for R. D. Burman’s debut career. Later she continued doing B grade movies and even appeared in supporting roles to new comers like Babita and Rajshree. She tried negative roles as well and end up her career finally with the movie, Haseena maan jaayegi. She still remains one among those rare, matured and talented actresses of Bollywood whose real caliber went unnoticed and unexperimented.

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Updated: January 18, 2014