From a prominent family of actors, he initially considered a career in science before following his father and elder brother into the film industry, but faced a tough time with his first 18 films tanking. It was then he reinvented himself to portray a new brand of hero, inspired by both James Dean and Elvis Presley.
In the process, Shammi Kapoor not only laid the way for a host of dancing male leads, from Joy Mukherjee and Jeetendra in his own heyday, and then, down the decades, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Mithun Chakraborty, Govinda, Shah Rukh Khan, and his own great nephew Ranbir Kapoor, but also transformed the very paradigm of the Hindi film hero, and in a way, Hindi films.
Gone was the silent, soft-spoken, upright hero - the meek one like his own elder brother Raj Kapoor, or the brooding one like Dilip Kumar - to be supplanted by a flamboyant, swaggering figure, with a casual approach to life, and not hesitant or apologetic in enjoying its pleasures - even ahead of the jaunty Dev Anand, who could never match that level of exuberance.
And for this type of hero, the light musical film - intended as pure entertainment without any messages - came into its own, and became the norm, rather than the exception.
Shammi Kapoor, who was born this day
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