Bollywood’s Shahenshah Amitabh Bachchan once found himself in an unexpected cold war with film magazines. Believe it or not, there was a time when top publications flat-out refused to print his name! At the peak of his superstardom, when every movie he touched turned to gold, Bachchan faced an unusual boycott in the aftermath of the 1975 Emergency. Editors were so adamant that they replaced any mention of him with just a comma! Indeed, a literal punctuation mark stood in for Bollywood’s biggest superstar. But what led to this bizarre media blackout? Let’s rewind to the drama of the ‘70s! In an interview with ANI, film critic and author Bharathi S Pradhan shed light on the controversy, revealing that after the Emergency ended, some film magazines held Amitabh Bachchan accountable for censoring their content. They accused him of “blue-penciling all copy,” including articles in prominent publications, believing he played a role in restricting their editorial freedom. “Just after the Emergency was lifted, a few magazines got together and banned Amitabh Bachchan because they felt that he and VC Shukla… were all one gang of Congress people and they had been blue-penciling all copy,” she said. Pradhan further shared that the boycott led to bizarre scenarios where magazines went out of their way to avoid mentioning Amitabh Bachchan’s name altogether. Some publications even resorted to replacing his name with a mere comma. “If there was a filmography of, say, Hema Malini, and Amitabh Bachchan was her co-star, they would just put a comma instead of his name because Amitabh Bachchan was banned, so you can’t put his name in the magazine,” Pradhan added. Pradhan also revealed that Amitabh Bachchan was fully aware of the boycott and even played along in his own way. To make it easier for editors to crop him out of group photos, the Sholay star would strategically position himself—almost as if he knew he was an unwanted guest in the frame! “If they were doing a group picture somewhere, once he got to know that this is what they were up to, when there would be a group picture, he’d go stand on the extreme right or extreme left,” she said. “He told me, ‘Just to facilitate their cutting, I would stand on the extreme right or extreme left,'” Pradhan recalled.