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Banners on screen and stage again
The good news is that the AVM banner will be seen on the big screen again early next year, after a break of five years during which the house formula of "clean, wholesome family-oriented entertainment where the story is everything'' was imprinted on the small screen in several successful serials. The last big screen success of AVM Productions was "Minsara Kanavu'', released in 1997 to mark the company's golden jubilee. Now, it hopes to score with its 162nd production, "Gemini'', shooting for which has just started.
Avichi Meyyappa Chettiar's successful feel for entertainment, however, long pre-dated his pioneering contributions to cinema. It began when he and a few friends started Saraswathi Stores in the 1930s in a period building on Mount Road. From selling gramophone records, Saraswathi went on to arranging for its own recordings to be cut and making the `Odeon' mark popular. In the heyday of the gramophone, Saraswathi Stores was perhaps the best known records stockist in the South. New technology forced the business to close down and a restaurant group imaginatively renovated the Mount Road landmark and ran an upmarket dosa restaurant in it. But that too recently closed shop.
The Saraswathi connection with sound was only a step away from film-making when the age of talkies began. And A.V. Meyyappan entered that age, making "Alli Arjuna'' in 1935. Success was to come his way, however, only with the release of "Nanda Kumar'' in 1938. By then, his Pragati Pictures had converted Admiralty House in Mandaveli into Hollywood-style studio. The Japanese threat of 1942 had him moving back to Karaikudi and, from hereon in, AVM began to tread new paths in film-making.
Following a path trod by K. Subramaniam in 1938, AVM began to encourage his team to shoot on location. Legend has it that his first location for a shoot was the Madras Club — its then handsome home, to which Club House Road led, now derelict. It's legend I find hard to believe, for that `Whites Only' club at the time, the heyday of the Raj, is unlikely to have been given out for film shooting, particularly to an Indian group in an age when Indians were not even allowed in the club as guests. The lease for a film shoot might have been given after the club sold its premises to Ramnath Goenka of The Indian Express in 1947.
No legend, though, is the fact that AVM pioneered the dubbing of films in South India, if not India, starting the trend with the Kannada film, "Harischandra,'' dubbed in Tamil in 1943. Then, when "Sri Valli'', released in 1945, began to draw adverse notice for the uninspired singing of Kumari Rukmini, he decided to replace her voice with another's and withdrew every print on the circuit to do so. Re-released, it was an instant success. And so he firmly cemented a trail for playback singers that he had blazed for the Tamil film in "Nanda Kumar."
The first film shot in the new studio AVM established in his home town, Karaikudi, was also the first major success of the newly formed AVM Productions. "Naam Iruvar'', released on the eve of Independence, was his first attempt at direction. The director-producer added a strong patriotic and nationalistic overlay to a family drama and his sure sense for the pulse of the moment brought in a hit, which was to launch an unforgettable AVM era in Indian film history.
AVM, however, is best remembered for the numerous actors, actresses and film-makers whom he first introduced in his films and who went on to gain stardom and fame. They included T. R. Mahalingam, comedian T. R. Ramachandran, T. A. Mathuram, V. K. Ramaswami, Kamal Hassan, K. Balachander (who started as scriptwriter), SP. Muthuraman and Vyjayanthimala. It was in the 1949 "Vazhkai'' that he introduced Vyjayanthimala and she became a star overnight when its Hindi version, "Bahar'', another pioneering step, proved a box-office hit and launched AVM into Hindi films. One of them was even a children's film, the award-winning "Hum Panchi Ek Daal Ke''. But perhaps his best film was "Andha Naal'', with Sivaji Ganesan and directed by S. Balachander in 1954; it was the first songless, danceless Tamil film.
Of all those AVM introduced in filmdom, Vyjayanthimala was, perhaps, the star most associated with the AVM banner. Even as AVM Productions gets down to making films for the big screen again, the dancer is also planning to play a greater role this music season. She's re-choreographing and presenting at the Krishna Gana Sabha, on December 16, "Sanga Thamizh Malai", which she first produced in the early 1950s. It's a performance that will feature 13 young dancers. And she begins the New Year with a Bharatanatyam recital at the Thyaga Brahma Gana Sabha, following on other performances outside Madras.
S. MUTHIAH
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