Shammi Kapoor - Telegraph

Shammi Kapoor - Telegraph: His gyrating dancing style, influenced by “The King”, transformed Bollywood’s traditionally innocent on-screen portrayal of love and romance into something much more raunchy. But although his frenetic energy and infectious screen appeal made Kapoor an early star of the Indian film industry, he later admitted that he was never a natural mover.

“The truth is I could never learn to dance. I even tried coaching classes but failed,” he said. “I always had a sense of music and rhythm. And that worked in my favour.”

Kapoor belonged to a famous family in the Indian film industry which included his father, Prithviraj, and brothers Raj and Shashi. But despite his background, Shammi made a stuttering start in Bollywood, and all his early films flopped at the box office. Only when he reinvented himself in Tumsa Nahin Dekha (1957), losing his seducer’s pencil moustache and fashioning his hair in typical ducktail style of the 1950s, did his career take flight.

Kapoor found stardom with his first colour film, Junglee, released in 1961, which proved a blockbusting hit. Thereafter he starred in more than 100, mostly lightweight, films. His Western-style garb of leather jacket and T-shirt, and catchy, upbeat musical numbers like Suku Suku cemented his appeal among teenage filmgoers.