Amitabh's "Don" (1978), Double Man (1967) & Mr. India (1961)

The mega blockbuster "DON" (1978) starring Amitabh Bachhan, Zeenat Aman and Pran, revolved around a plot where a famous Don is replaced by a look alike, who has been specially trained for this job by the police officials. Brilliantly directed by Chandra Barot, the movie is surely one of the fastest thriller movies ever made in Hindi Cinema.

Before this super hit Bollywood movie, a similar flick was made in the West in 1967, which was also based on the same plot of planting a double in the place of a high profile Gangster. The movie was rightly called "Double Man" as suggested by its novel storyline.

Chek out at : http://imdb.com/title/tt0061594/  

But quite interestingly a few years before these projects came into existence, there was a so called low budget Hindi movie released in 1961 with a title “Mr. India”, starring the famous comedian, I. S. Johar in the lead. Now this movie also had a similar story written around the outline of replacing a well know Gangster with his look alike according to a plan made by the local police. I. S. Johar himself played the double role in this thriller cum comic movie directed by G. P. Sippy

Incidentally in the year 1962, another famous movie "China Town" having the energetic Shammi Kapoor in the lead also revolved around the same plot of using the double and then Subhash Ghai came with his own version of the theme with Shatrughan Sinha as "Kalicharan" in 1976.

Hence, Amitabh Bachhan's “Don” seems to be influenced by our own “Mr. India”, "China Town" or may be "Kalicharan" too as it seems. And since there is no info of any other movie released before “Mr. India” based on the similar plot, so that clearly indicates that Bollywood came up with this original story idea first, which later may have influenced the project of the Western film-makers in all possibilites.
 

Click here to read more amazing facts related to “Don” & its making.