He cast two unknown actresses in Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1954):
Ameeta in the heroine role and
Asha Parekh in a child's role. A few years later, he offered a grown-up Asha the chance to make her debut as a heroine in Goonj Uthi Shehnai (1959), but fired her claiming she wasn't star material. He then hired Ameeta to replace Asha in his film, since she was just coming off of Nasir Hussain's hit film Tumsa Nahin Dekha (1957) with Shammi Kapoor. But Hussain didn't want to work with Ameeta again, complaining that she had never fit his concept of a heroine and hired Asha for Dil Deke Dekho (1959), which made her a star. Although Goonj Uthi Shehnai was a hit, Ameeta didn't become a major star and her career ended in 1968, while Asha went on to become a major star, an award-winning actress, and a Bollywood icon .
