Rajkumar - The Pole Star of Kannada Cinema
Rajkumar, originally Muthuraju, the most acclaimed actor of Kannada Cinema, died the day before yesterday(13 Apr 2006), and as Udaya TV was covering the events aftermath, praising him using all the sanskrit and kannada literary jargon, two descriptions befitted him:
1. "kannada chitrarangada Dhruva thaare" - "The Pole Star of Kannada Cinema"
2. "na bhootO na bhavishyathi" - "Neither has ever been a parallel, nor will there be any"
I'm not a 'fan' of his; I have but seen only a handful of his over 220 movies, but there's no denying that he ruled the hearts of thousands of kannadigas through what he did and did not do in his life. 'aNNaavru' as he(a 'kuruba') was oftenly called as by many kannadigas with pride,respect and loyalty - an indication to his great personality. Great in the sense that not only did he earn the loyalty of thousands of fans, but he also captured the imagination/admiration of and influenced the lives of lakhs of people.
Born in 1928, in Gajanur (T.N. near Karnataka border), Rajkumar started out as a theatre artiste and worked under Gubbi VeeraNNa, a noted theatre artiste himself and a theatre company owner (in which Raj's father worked too). It was around 1953 that he ventured into Kannada Cinema through 'Bedara KaNNappa' and there was no stopping him till age and health gave up around 1995 or so. The best of his acting, according to me, has come in his historical/mythological/devitional roles. Those are precisely the roles(in my view, again) which fetched him the loyalty of most of his fans. Apart from being a good actor, he was a good singer and a Yoga expert too. But he mostly sung for himself and his movies (though initially P.B. Srinivas sung for him). He won a national award for singing 'naadamaya...' in 'Jeevana Chaitra'.
But his activities were not restricted to cinema. His participation in Gokak Agitation for Kannada medium education in govt. schools in mid '70's, people say, was instrumental it's successful conclusion. As with other southern idols like MGR in TN and NTR in AP, there was a great potential for him to enter politics in a big way, but I guess his wife didn't like the prospect of her losing control of him! and so Kannada lost out a bit! Having said that, I must say there's no unanimous admiration about his contribution to the Kannada Film Industry, let alone Kannada: a person of his stature could have done more to it.
na bhootO na bhavishyathi!
1. "kannada chitrarangada Dhruva thaare" - "The Pole Star of Kannada Cinema"
2. "na bhootO na bhavishyathi" - "Neither has ever been a parallel, nor will there be any"
I'm not a 'fan' of his; I have but seen only a handful of his over 220 movies, but there's no denying that he ruled the hearts of thousands of kannadigas through what he did and did not do in his life. 'aNNaavru' as he(a 'kuruba') was oftenly called as by many kannadigas with pride,respect and loyalty - an indication to his great personality. Great in the sense that not only did he earn the loyalty of thousands of fans, but he also captured the imagination/admiration of and influenced the lives of lakhs of people.
Born in 1928, in Gajanur (T.N. near Karnataka border), Rajkumar started out as a theatre artiste and worked under Gubbi VeeraNNa, a noted theatre artiste himself and a theatre company owner (in which Raj's father worked too). It was around 1953 that he ventured into Kannada Cinema through 'Bedara KaNNappa' and there was no stopping him till age and health gave up around 1995 or so. The best of his acting, according to me, has come in his historical/mythological/devitional roles. Those are precisely the roles(in my view, again) which fetched him the loyalty of most of his fans. Apart from being a good actor, he was a good singer and a Yoga expert too. But he mostly sung for himself and his movies (though initially P.B. Srinivas sung for him). He won a national award for singing 'naadamaya...' in 'Jeevana Chaitra'.
But his activities were not restricted to cinema. His participation in Gokak Agitation for Kannada medium education in govt. schools in mid '70's, people say, was instrumental it's successful conclusion. As with other southern idols like MGR in TN and NTR in AP, there was a great potential for him to enter politics in a big way, but I guess his wife didn't like the prospect of her losing control of him! and so Kannada lost out a bit! Having said that, I must say there's no unanimous admiration about his contribution to the Kannada Film Industry, let alone Kannada: a person of his stature could have done more to it.
na bhootO na bhavishyathi!
posted by Aditya K @ 3:36 pm
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