Legends Of Telugu Cinema, NTR and ANR Options

[Abdur Rehman]

I am starting a new post on the Legends of Telugu Cinema NT Rama Rao and A Nageswar Rao. I know the foot fall of this post will be few but still I want to complete my collection and sharing the albums available with me of these two legends. These two need no introduction as far as Telugu Cinema is concerned. They were fortunate enough to have reigned the Golden Period of Telugu Cinema accompanied my Ghantasala's music. Here is the brief biography of these two stars followed by their filmography.

[swarapriya]

Palletoori Pilla (1950)

This movie is a landmark in the Telugu film industry for several reasons. It was directed by the first time director B.A. Subba Rao who went on to make several great movies in Telugu like “Bheeshma”, “Raju Peda”, “Chenchu Lakshmi”, and others. But it was more significant because it introduced N.T. Rama Rao in the lead for the first time. For Rao, who made his debut in a supporting negative role in L.V. Prasad's "Mana Desham" in 1949, this was the first film in which he got the opportunity to play the lead role. When he was selected to play the role, many expressed concern about a newcomer playing the lead. Anjali Devi and Nageshwara Rao, both established actors by this time, were already signed to play the other lead roles in the movie. After the movie was released and became an instant success, the director’s choice of Rama Rao as the hero was applauded.

Taapi Chanakya, son of Taapi Dharma Rao, a noted writer who co-wrote the story, dialogues, and lyrics for this film, was the assistant director. Chanakya later made himself a name by directing several successful films such as “Ramudu Bheemudu”. He also directed the Dilip-starrer “Ram Aur Shyam (1967)” in Hindi.

Aadi Narayana Rao, a childhood friend of Subba Rao, composed the music. Rao was married to Anjali Devi, the heroine of the film. I am not sure whether they were married before this movie or afterwards. He later established with his wife a production company called “Anjali Pictures” and made several successful movies. Rao composed hit music for several movies including the award winning “Suvarna Sundari". Rao also composed the music for the Hindi version of this film. He helped develop the story of this film along with Taapi Dharma Rao and the director Subba Rao. The story was loosely based on an English play "Fijaro" by Richard Sherton.

T.V. Raju was the assistant music director of the film. He assisted Rao for a long time. Raju later went onto make big as an independent music director with several hit films like “Jayasimha”, “Panduranga Mahatyam”, and others.

Dance director for the film was Vedantam Raghavayya. Raghavayya later became a full-fledged director. His most famous film is the Telugu classic “Devadasu” made in 1953 with Savithri and Nageshwara Rao.

Rama Rao's first take in this film was the scene in which he is slapped by the heroine. Later on in an interview, Subba Rao recalls that for the first time hero it was a very difficult shot. They got the scene finally right but only after several takes. In the action sequence where the hero has to fight a bull, apparently NTR himself fought the bull without taking any help. He suffered several bodily injuries in the fight. In spite of this, he showed up the very next day for the shoot, all covered with bandages and ready to go.

The movie when it was released became a super hit. Gemini later made this in Hindi as “Insaniyat” in 1955 with Bina Rai (Anjali’s role), Dilip Kumar (Nageshwara Rao) and Dev Anand (Rama Rao). Hindi film also was a super hit.

I was fortunate enough to get hold of a VCD of this film. In spite of the poor overall quality, I was able to rip all the songs and several music clips. I cleaned them to reduce the noise from most of the songs and the final result for a movie that is 56 years old turned out to be fairly decent. The only problem is that I don’t have singer assignments. If someone can help with this I will be very grateful.

I will upload these songs in three back-to-back posts. The first two posts contain all the songs from the film. The third post includes several music clips.

Here are the songs in the first post…