“Sadaramey” (Kannada) was a popular stage play for many years since the early decades of the 20th Century. It's the tale of a woman who undergoes many adventures and emerges successful, and with whom a prince falls in love. It was adapted from a little-known Marathi play “Mitra” by Shirish Athwale. Gubbi Veeranna, the legendary Kannada stage and screen pioneer, adapted it as a play, ‘Sadaramey', and made it a success. One of the characters, an enterprising thief with a roving eye named ‘Pucca Kalla' became a legend in Kannada Theatre and Cinema, with the role being played by Veeranna himself.
“Sadaramey” was brought to the Kannada screen in 1935. The film marked the debut of the singing star of yesteryear, K. Aswathamma who donned the lead role and Veeranna played Pucca Kalla. Directed by the renowned Raja Chandrasekhar, it was a super hit. Not surprisingly, Veeranna produced it again in 1956 with Sowcar Janaki in the title role, Kalyankumar as the prince and Veeranna reprising his role, though he was not so young.
K. Subramanyam produced it in Tamil in 1935, calling it Naveena Sadaram with his star wife S. D. Subbulakshmi in the title role. It was for this film that Papanasam Sivan composed the music and wrote the lyrics.
Why ‘ Naveena '? During that period, many familiar stories were made into films by more than one producer, and the later version of the same story had the prefix ‘Naveena', meaning it was a newer version than the previous one! In those days, in keeping with the tradition of theatre, movies invariably had a prayer song played against the titles in which the name of the production company, and sometimes even the director's, found a place!
For this film, Papanasam Sivan sang a song off screen as a prayer with his nephew S.S. Mani — ‘Maa Ramanan Uma Ramanan' which is now popular in the Carnatic music circuit. Sadly, no gramophone record of the song was made and it was lost to posterity. However, Subramanyam and Sivan used the same in Seva Sadanam sung by ‘MS', making it an immortal melody.
Sadaram (Subbulakshmi) dons a male role to escape the thief (Pattu Iyer) and the princess (Parvathi Bai) promptly falls in love with her unaware that ‘he' (she!) is also a woman! Sadaram is already in love with a prince (Sankaralingam) and another woman is in love with her! This confusion is happily solved by the prince marrying both women!
Subbulakshmi, one of the attractive and talented stars of Tamil cinema, excelled in the roles of a woman and a man, and her performance as usual drew praise from filmgoers and critics alike. Indhubala, the noted ‘gramophone plate' singer of the North, played the role of a mother and sang two songs of which one was in Tamil. There were as many as 28 songs with most of them adapted from popular Hindi movie tunes with due credit given to the original tunes. However, excepting the off-screen prayer song by Sivan and Mani, no other song became popular.
Remembered for: the double role of Subbulakshmi, deft direction of Subramanyam and the off-screen prayer song.
