The man who made unforgettable movies starting from ‘Siri Siri Muvva’ (1978), the classic ‘Sankarabharanam’ starring J.V. Somayajulu in 1979 to ‘Apathbandhavudu’ with megastar Chiranjeevi, in 1992, Edida Nageswara Rao was on Monday given his last farewell by the who’s who of the film fraternity.
Till afternoon, the body was kept at ‘Shankarabharanam Nivasam’, the family house in Film Nagar for a few hours, before the last journey began, to Mahaprasthanam Crematorium nearby. Among those who paid floral tributes at the residence including actors Chiranjeevi, Kaikala Satyanarayana, Suman, Ali, Allu Arjun, producers D. Suresh Babu, Allu Aravind, K.S. Rama Rao, directors K. Viswanath, B. Gopal and Kodi Ramakrishna.
Singer Janaki, whose rendition of the song that goes ‘Vennllo Godaari …’ in ‘Sitara’ that got her a national award, silently sobbed, as did most others. Barring ‘Swarakalpana’ and ‘Apathbandhuvudu’, all his other films were runaway hits and thus Edida Nageswara Rao carved out his ‘niche’, leaving his indelible stamp on complete, family entertainers with messages that quite a few youth took, seriously. Interestingly, even as a producer, Nageswara Rao could convince stars like Kamal Haasan to act in an ‘old’ role while he was just 28 years of age, in ‘Sagara Sangamam’, as a mentally-challenged youth in love in the film ‘Swathi Muthyam’. Then his experiments convinced Chiranjeevi, who had by then earned the sobriquet ‘Megastar’ and was at his zenith, to essay the role in ‘Swayamkrushi’. The producer gave singer S.P. Balasubrahmanyam his first national award as Best Singer in Telugu and music director K.V. Mahadevan too his first national award in Telugu, with ‘Sankarabharanam’. Maestro Ilayaraja got his first national award in Telugu with ‘Sitara’. Such was the power of Nageswara Rao’s banner, ‘Poornodaya Movie Creations’.
Even as a producer, Nageswara Rao could convince Kamal Haasan to act in an ‘old’ role when the latter was just 28
