The cause was liver and other age-related ailments, family sources said.
Directed by Sippy's son Ramesh, Sholay revolutionized Hindi filmmaking and brought true professionalism to Indian script writing. Written by Sippy's favorite scriptwriting team, Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, Sholay was loosely styled on The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven, and has been called India's first "curry western."
In Sholay two close friends who are small-time thieves are recruited by a former police officer to fight a ruthless bandit leader. Its stirring score is by Rahul Dev Burman.
On its release, the film ran for a record 286 straight weeks at the Minerva Theater in Mumbai, then called Bombay. It also broke all previous earning records for commercial cinema in India. In 1999 BBC India declared it "the film of the millennium."
Sholay made Sippy and many of its cast members - including Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, Hema Malini, Jaya Bhaduri and Amjad Khan - into some of Bollywood's biggest stars.
RSS