Journey of the evergreen Manohara-- from stage to big screens

CHENNAI: It was the early 40s and theatre -the plebian entertainment of the presidency was in its swansong of glory. Though unable to compete with the emerging talkies, it still delivered good plays to people. There was no script that was as popular as the tale of Manohara.

The story of a disinherited prince fighting for justice and his rightful place in history. Even minor drama troupes had access to the script without intellectual property disputes or an in house story writer. Commendably, the play was written by the greatest living dramatist of the times. Pammal Sambandha Mudaliar This democratisation was possible because of a unique franchise model.

Pammal Sambandam, a lawyer and later, a small causes court judge was a prolific writer of play scripts. He wrote them mainly for the Suguna Vilas Sabha which with its stringent rules of timing( no all-night shows), actor’s quality( only graduates could act) and content ( even Shakespeare plays in Tamil) had revolutionised Tamil theatre.

The Tamil stage was much respected after centuries of societal disdain due to his efforts. Pammal truly cared for the whole Tamil theatre fraternity. He made his best known play Manohara accessible to all drama troupes in Tamil speaking regions in India and abroad.

The only condition was the troupe whether big or small, or whether they had a full house or empty chairs should pay a royalty of Rs 20 for each show. This was a windfall for many companies with mediocre story teams. Pammal was reported to sometimes make Rs 10,000 a month on the royalties, which was much more than the income he made as a lawyer. Destiny has strange ways.

One notable instance when this play was staged with drama star KR Ramasamy acting in the titular role and the stree part played by a teenager VC Ganesan. The stree part or the heroine role was usually done by a boy dressed up aptly to resemble a female and who spoke in a falsetto voice. How the young actor felt that day, nobody actually recorded. But obviously he had no inkling that he would play the titular role in the most popular cinematic version of the same play. One that would be what everyone remembered of Manohara thereafter. Irony was KR Ramasami the drama hero was lobbying for the cinematic part but was replaced by the boy who played his heroine in the play. There were some worries when Jupiter Somasundaram wanted to film this . The earlier celluloid version of the film with Pammal himself acting as the rude king sunk like a stone in the box office. But after a few shuffling in the cast and creative team, it took off. In a rare phenomenon the production company Manohar pictures and the title were same. Sivaji Ganesan as Manohara had an opportunity to express pathos, valor, love and exuberance.

In a way it was an advertisement of the plethora of talents for the film field to use him in a wide variety of roles. But even the attention Sivaji garnered was challenged by Kannamba as the queen mother with her impeccable dialogue. With one line “Poruththathu pothum pongi ezhu”( You have waited enough. Rise and roar) she nearly stole the show from him. Just a decade previous to this film, Kannamba a Telugu girl would actually memorise her Tamil dialogues with a script written in Telugu.

The 1949 Biblical Hollywood drama Samson and Delilah, directed by Cecil B. DeMille had just won two Academy Awards,. In the climax ( a scene not mentioned in the bible) a chained Samson uses all his strength to break the restraint and brings down the pillars. It’s obvious the Manohara team had learnt from it.

A chained Sivaji is inspired by his sad mother’s words and brings down the restraining pillars and goes onto destroy his enemies. LV prasad who had worked with the Kapoors of Prithvi theatre and had acted in the first talkies of three languages was the director.

M Karunanidhi, who wrote the scintillating script was a rationalist who overcame his own beliefs to introduce a revenge seeking ghost as a character- One that frees the trapped hero quite a few times. The film was shot in Tamil and Telugu and dubbed into Hindi as well. Manohara was one of the rare films where both the lead actor and the director got the coveted Dadasaheb Phalke awards later. The script writer M Karunanidhi would go on to rule the state in less than 15 years. The film left almost everyone involved in the higher strata except TR Rajakumari, the beautiful actress whom critics said needed no dialogues but could even act with her eyes. TR Rajakumari the seductive heartthrob of the 40s never shied from a negative character as in Haridas where she plays the avaricious courtesan swindling the hero. And in Manohara, she was the beautiful yet the scheming embodiment of villainy.

But because of her star value she took the second importance in all posters. While shooting for Manohara, Rajakumari was producing what she thought was a magnum opus. Both the emerging superstars who people knew would rule the roost for the next couple of decades- Sivaji and MGR would respectfully call her akka. Using that relationship, she decided to produce her film Goondukili with both of them. Rajkumari calculated it would be the biggest coup in Tamil cinema history but the film flopped destroying a lot of her hard earned assets.