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]

(NTR) Chandrahaaram (1954)

Ever since Vijaya Pictures entered into production of movies with their maiden venture "Shaavukaaru" in 1950, they made it a point to produce alternately a social film followed by a fantasy or mythological. "Chandrahaaram" with a story by Pingali Nagendra Rao borrowed heavily from several children books all over the world and in doing so lost its focus. With the central character, here NTR, sleeping (like in "Sleeping Beauty" story), there wasn't much to be done. The director resorts heavily on the supporting actors, mostly comedians. For director Kamalakara Kamseshwara Rao, a Telugu film critic until this film, this was a maiden assignment. Even though L.V. Prasad supervised the proceedings, because of the feeble storyline no one could help lift the movie. In spite of this setback, Rao went on to make several good movies including "Panduranga Mahatyam (1957)" and "Gundamma Katha (1962)".

Interestingly, Vijaya Pictures spent a lot of money making this movie. Until that time, this was the costliest Telugu film made. Its budget was estimated at 25 lakh Rupees!

One novelty of the movie was that Savithri was cast in a negative role. There are plenty of songs in the film, 14 of them. They seem to appear so frequently that the pace of the proceeding slows even further. Nevertheless, there are several good songs composed by Ghantasala.

I am uploading these songs in two back-to-back posts. Here are the songs in the first post...

This post has been edited by swarapriya: Aug 23 2011, 07:29 PM