Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, also kept his fans on their toes to see if they could spot him (sometimes no more than for 10 seconds) in his films! He made these blink-and-you-miss appearances in an estimated 39 of his 52 films.
Not to be left behind, there are enough and more instances in Bollywood too of directors and famous actors in now-you-see them-now-you-don’t appearances. If you have watched the opening scene of Baazi (1951) closely, as a nattily dressed Rashid Ahmed, with a walking cane on his arm, steps out of his car, lights a cigarette and steps into the club, another man seated on the pavement, watches him too. After the camera follows Rashid into the club, it is quite likely the man on the pavement may have shouted “Cut!” to his cameraman. Because he was Guru Dutt, the director of Baazi. Guru Dutt did it once again in his next film Jaal (1952) where he is spotted in the song too, Guru Dutt make an appearance in the song Zor laga ke haiya .
Vijay Anand who loved Hitchcock allowed himself to be on screen in the classic Rafi solo
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Hrishikesh Mukherjee tried it out once, but he went unnoticed and no one spoke much about it. It was in a 13-seconds long song sequence Rehene ko ghar do in Biwi aur Makan (1966) . The film made no impact whatsoever and may be that made him superstitious enough not to risk appearing in cameos again.
Gulzar says he was once forced to appear in a cameo as otherwise he would not have got his lunch! Basu Bhattacharya invited him home to a lunch that he said he was cooking himself. When Gulzar reached there he found the director shooting the song sequence of
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