Some unknown facts about 'Sholay' movie..

Here it goes....

1. The screenplay of Sholay was originally a 4 line snippet created by writers Salim-Javed.

2. Two producer/director teams rejected the idea before it found favor with Ramesh Sippy.

3. It was only after Sholay that scriptwriters came to be respected and well paid in Bollywood.

4. The song “Yeh Dosti” took 21 days to shoot; the scene where Jaya’s character Radha lights a lamp took 20 days to shoot.

5. There was actually a dacoit named Gabbar Singh in the 1950’s in the Gwalior area; he used to cut off the noses and ears of policemen.

6. Thakur’s character was originally supposed to be a retired army officer. This was changed to a police officer because the filmmakers thought it would be difficult to get requisite permissions.

7. There was a real life Soorma (after which Jagdeep’s character Soorma Bhopali was named). He was a forest officer from Bhopal; an acquaintance of Jagdeep.

8. Danny Denzongpa was considered for the role of Gabbar first.

9. It took 40 retakes before the scene featuring the line “kitne aadmi they” was finalised.

10. Mac Mohan’s character, Sambha had only one line in the film, but he is still referred to as ‘Sambha’.

11. If Zanjeer made him a star, Sholay made Amitabh Bachchan a superstar.

12. Dharmendra wanted to play the role of Thakur initially, but settled on playing Veeru when he found out that he was to be paired with Hema Malini.

13. During the shooting of the film, Dharmendra would pay the light boys to spoil his scenes with 

 Hema Malini so retakes would be required.

14. Amitabh Bachchan married Jaya Bhaduri 4 months before shooting for Sholay started.

15. Sholay was film of many firsts: the first Hindi film made in 70 mm and the first to be made with stereophonic sound.

16. The original ending of Sholay showed Gabbar being killed by Thakur.
The Censor Board required the ending of Sholay to be re-shot and several scenes to be redone because they were thought of as extremely violent.
People saw only the edited version for the first 15 years after release, though in 1990 the original uncut version became available.

 17. In 1999, BBC India called Sholay the Film of the Millennium. It also topped the all-time poll of the best Indian films conducted by the British Film Institute.
However it won only one Filmfare award – for best editing.