Blockbuster Hindi film Sholay- Behind the Curtains!

Mr.Sunil Kapoor, Author with Legendry Bollywood Actor, Dharmendra

Sholay is one of the most Iconic film of Bollywood ,duly packed with  action ,romance ,drama,emotion, comedy et-al. The film was a blockbuster and is even watched today. It starred some of the biggest actors of the seventies — Dharmendra , Amitabh Bachchan,Sanjeev Kumar ,Hema Malini,Amjad Khan etc. It achieved a cult status but there were certain blunders committed while making this film and some by actors who refused to act in the film.

Not many would know that the role eventually given to Amitabh was offered to Shatrughan Sinha . Dharmendra was supposed to enact the role of Thakur and Sanjeev Kumar was cast against Hema Malini in the lead role. Not only that the role of Gabbar Singh was  first offered to the Thespian of Hindi cinema – Dilip Kumar.

The story and screenplay writers Salim Javed had in fact written the script keeping in mind the role of a Dacoit  played by Dilip Kumar in the film Ganga Jamuna. As it turned out the thespian accepted to do the role and asked for the script. As was customary with him he went through the entire script and then changed the same to suit himself.He sent back the script duly amended which inter alia contained that  Gabbar Singh used to be a good and an innocent  farmer, but became a dacoit after the Zamindar played havoc in his life. That was not acceptable to the Producers and the writers and hence Dilip Saheb refused to play Gabbar Singh in the film.

Thereafter the role was given to  Danny Dengzongapa who was busy shooting for Feroz khan’s Dharmatama and was shooting for a long duration in Afghanistan. He too couldn’t do  the film.it was then that this role was given to the inimitable Amjad Khan  . However in case the thespian had done that role it might have been a different story. But it was a sort of blunder on his part  to refuse and not to be part of a cult film as duly repented  later by Danny .

Some other errors which took place were  something like the-entire village is shown to have no electricity but there is a water tank. Without electricity it is not possible to fill the tank .

As per the location ,the Thakur ‘s Haveli was just behind Gabbar den and in one shot the tip of the roof is visible. Later in order to circumvent that the director made Sambha sit on an artificially made rock and had asked him to not to move lest the roof may again become visible.

Nevertheless,this film featured the best of all the spheres and set a Benchmark in the film industry. It is impossible to talk about the glorious history of Indian cinema without citing Sholay as an example and its cult status