Did you know? Big B’s iconic character, Anthony Gonsalves was named after THIS real person

Among all the works of legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan, ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’ is one of the finest movies of his career. Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan played brothers in this movie. Big B played the character of Anthony Gonsalves and he was actually named after a real person.

In the movie, Amitabh was earlier named Anthony Fernandez but during the making of the iconic song, ‘My Name Is Anthony’, Laxmikant and Pyarelal, the music directors of the movie didn’t find ‘Fernandez’ appropriate. So they changed the name of the character to Anthony Gonsalves.

Out of all the three characters, Amitabh’s character was loved by the audiences to the core. With his one-liners and comic timings, he made his presence felt on-screen. And how can we forget the cult song, ‘My name is Anthony Gonsalves, main duniya mein akela hoon’? In a particular scene of the song, we see Big B coming out of an Easter egg and this scene is still fresh in our memory.

Interestingly there is a reason why the name was changed from Anthony Fernandez to Gonsalves. Anthony Gonsalves was Pyarelal’s violin teacher and real-life guru and to pay tribute to him, the composer suggested his name. The idea was liked by everyone including the director Manmohan Desai.

Anthony Gonsalves was a musician from Majorda village in Goa. He played the violin for leading Hindi film music composers in 1950s & 60s

famous song “my name is Anthony Gonsalves” is composer Pyarelal’s tribute to his violin teacher & real-life Guru.#HappyEaster #EasterSunday pic.twitter.com/4dWVqvossC

— Film History Pics (@FilmHistoryPic) April 21, 2019

Anthony Gonsalves is not known to many but his contribution to Bollywood music industry is immense. He worked with the music composers like Madan Mohan and SD Burman. He has remained teachers to many music directors of Bollywood who gave hit songs but his name never came to limelight. What an irony, isn’t it?

For more trivia like this, keep reading our space.

Also Read: Amitabh Bachchan: We didn’t shoot My name is Anthony Gonsalves