In the 1950s and even later, Akkineni Nageswara Rao, popularly known as ANR, enjoyed a good innings in Tamil cinema, though he was a Telugu-speaking actor. With the emergence of Sivaji Ganesan, M.G. Ramachandran, Gemini Ganesan and S.S. Rajendran, he faded away, mainly because his Tamil accent was not good enough to compete with the impeccable dialogue delivery of Sivaji, S.S. Rajendran and others. He shifted base to Hyderabad, built his own studio, and began to focus on Telugu films, with many becoming superhits. If Hyderabad is today the capital of Telugu cinema, it’s because of Nageswara Rao.
One Tamil film he made in 1959 was Kalaivaanan, directed by P. Pullaiah. It had Pullaiah’s wife, veteran actress P. Shanthakumari playing mother and Anjali Devi was the leading lady. V. Narayana Rao, about whom not much is known, produced the film under the Saradha Movies banner. Pendyala composed the music while the dialogue was penned by Sridhar. Nagercoil Padmanabhan was the ‘dialogue director’ whose involvement was necessary because some of the actors were from Telugu cinema and their accent required coaching. The lyrics were by Kambadasan, A. Marudhakasi, Thanjai Ramaiah Das, Pattukottai Kalyanasundaram, and Pazhanichami. T.M. Soundararajan, Sirgazhi Govindarajan, Tiruchi Loganathan, Ghantasala, S.C. Krishnan, M.L. Vasanthakumari, P. Susheela, Jikki, and S. Janaki were the playback singers. Noted cinematographer P.L. Rai handled the camera, while veteran audiographer A. Krishnan was in charge of sound recording and the film was shot at Vijaya Vauhini Studios.
The story of
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
As the film is about artistes, there is much singing and dancing. There is also a dance drama about ‘
Remembered for: Pullaiah’s deft direction, impressive cinematography, and good performances by the cast.