Few days ago we have celebrated the jumping jack Jeetendra’s birthday (7th of April) so this post will be about Jeetndra’s super hit pairing with Sridevi. Jeetendra was a huge Sridevi fan right before she made her debut in Hindi films. He was very keen to work with her and he suggested her name to the director K. Raghvendra Rao to be his heroine in Himmatwala. Himmatwala was a remake of Jaya Prada’s Telugu film Ooriki Monagadu (1981). Jaya was upset with Jeetendra for not taking her instead of Sridevi. She did not speak with him for three months because of that.
Jeetendra went on to make a very successful team with Sridevi. They acted in 16 films together of which 13 were hits. Sridevi was the last heroine with whom Jeetendra made a very successful team. After her there was no heroine that he could have made a successful pair with, even though he acted with Meenkashi Sheshadri, Madhuri Dixit, Bhanupriya, Kimi Katkar & others in more than one movie but none of them made a successful pairing with him. The south remakes specially those with Sridevi have extended Jeentendra’s film career by more than a decade.
The most successful heroines pairings with Jeetendra besides Sridevi are Jaya Prada, Hema Malini, Rekha and Reena Roy. He gave several hits with each one of them. But what makes his pairing with Sridevi stands out the most than the rest are several things. In one of his interviews when he was asked about his heroines Jeetendra said that audience and his fans have always complimented him and liked his pairing with Sridevi more. He said that he has been told many times that they look really good together on screen.
Another thing to note is that Jeetendra worked in less films with Sridevi than the rest yet the success ratio of his films with Sridevi were higher than other heroines. Jaya Prada comes as a second, Hema Malini comes in third place while Rekha and Reena Roy come in the fourth and fifth places. The below picture shows the number of films Jeetendra worked with each of his hit pairing heroines and the success ratio of the pairing depending on the number of hits given.
We hope Jeetendra had a very happy birthday and we thank him for his contribution to the Indian cinema.
Happy Birthday Jeetuji!
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