Kalathur Kannamma was a smash hit for the AVM studios, back in 1959, and it also saw the entry of the now widely admired Kamal Haasan as a child artist.
Decades after its release, when AVM Studios decided to remake Kalathur Kannamma as Amma and asked Kamal to lift the child artiste for a photo-shoot, he turned emotional.
“The child was wearing the same shirt and shorts I wore in the film. AVM have preserved it till date. Not only the dresses, but scripts of every film,” says Kamal Haasan in a documentary released recently to commemorate the70th anniversary of the studio.
‘AVM 70,’ directed by noted Tamil writer Suka, offers rare glimpses of an astonishing success story of the legendary studio when most of the other production houses have disappeared.
“A.V. Meiyappan, Gemini Vasan, Nagi Reddi, Modern Theatres Sundaram, Jupiter Somu and Pakshiraja Sriramulu Naidu are considered six pillars of the Tamil film industry. But today only AVM survives,” points out director Muktha Srinivasan, whose own Muktha Films turned out a number of hits till the eighties.
From Karaikudi in Chettinadu, where his father was running a shop, the migration of Meiyappa Chettiyar to Chennai and thence his journey in the film industry bears striking testimony to the motto of the AVM Productions he built brick by brick — “Effort Triumphs” (Muyarchi Thiruvinaiyakkum).
He established Saraswathi Sound Production in 1943 and his first film was Alli Arjuna . “The hero of the film was Anandanarayan Iyer. He acted in the film mostly with his eyes closed because of powerful lights beamed on him. The film cost me Rs. 80,000,” Meiyappa Chettiar reminisced in his autobiography.
As power cuts during World War II did not allow him to set up a studio in Chennai, he created one in Karaikudi and the first film Naam Iruvar was a hit.
Apart from the comments of the likes of director A.C. Thirulogachander and dialogue writers V.C. Guhanathan and Aroor Dhas who were closely associated with Meiyappa Chettiar, the new documentary crafted by Mr Suka carries clips of speeches of late thespian Sivaji Ganesan, whose path-breaking film Parasakthi was made by AVM.
Sivaji’s tribute
“Rajamani was my mother. But it was AVM that made me what I am today. If I forget AVM, I will be an ungrateful man,” Sivaji Ganesan says in the clip.
The late Murasoli Maran is seen remarking that Meiyappa Chettiar was not a filmmaker who would just be content in meeting the expectations of an average Tamil film-goer. “He swam against popular currents and still achieved success,” he says in the film.
It was such an adventurous spirit that had induced him to go for an exclusively children film, Hum Panchhi Ek Dalke , which won him the Central government’s Gold Medal instituted in the name of Jawaharlal Nehru.
Nehru was pleased with Meiyappan Chettiar because no one else in the country had come forward to make a children’s film at that time. After the award function, Nehru hosted a dinner for Chettiar and his wife at his residence.
Late G.K. Moopanar recalled how Meiyappan Chettiar came forward to give up his rights over the videos of the Bharathiar songs he had used in the various films made by him once the State government nationalised the great poet’s works.
