Box office collection

EVERYONE FEASTS on film trivia. Dates, events, places, people, anecdotes, gossip. Say, when did Rajnikant enter the celluloid world, what were his first views...

In fact, when the superstar was looking for the documented reports of his own first moves, the organisers of Rajni-25 sent the word out. The answer came from a man with an unusual hobby - collecting film magazines and newspaper cuttings from 1931.

A. V. Jayababu has in his collection over 10,000 film magazines and 5000 books of film lyrics. The books and other items date back over 60 years. He picked up the hobby from his father, who was also interested in this work.

It has been a busy time for this collector of film literature: the first heroine of Tamil films, T. P. Rajalakshmi who is now in the US, sought his help to get details about the films that she acted in.

Sivaji Ganesan's son, Ram Kumar, has got in touch with him on using his literature as and when an exhibition on Sivaji is organised. Film historian Anandan was immensely pleased to see the old film bulletins form part of the collection.

Jayababu has 1,000 sheets containing press cuttings about MGR, particularly all the advertisements of films in which MGR starred from the first movie, ``Sathi Leelavathi'', to his last film ``Maduraiyai Meetta Sundarapandian''.

Film trivia lovers would be swept by nostalgia to hear that the picture MGR wanted to direct first in 1957 had the title ``Thenatrangarai''.

But the film he directed first was ``Nadodi Mannan''. Naming films after lines of some famous songs is not something new. MGR wanted the title of his second film to be ``Thoongathe Thambi Thoongathe'', lifted from a song in ``Nadodi Mannan'', but he gave up the proposal to make this film as well as ``Thenatrangarai''. Jayababu wanted to organise an exhibition on S. S. Vasan, A.V.M. Chettiar and other luminaries of the film industry but has not got round to doing it yet.

He is also ready to lend his services to any person who would start a website on Tamil films.

Not only Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and English film magazines, special issues and journals, but even religious and literary works published over 100 years ago find a place in this library.

In a country where information stored in an organised form is hard to find, Mr. Jayababu is apparently trying to make a difference.

By S. R. Ashok Kumar

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