Kalathur Kannamma

Kalathur Kannamma (1960)

A landlord's son and a farmer's daughter fall in love and marry secretly in a temple. Since their love is not accepted by the families, they are forced to separate while their child grows up in an orphanage.

Date of release
1960-03-15
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (2)
Runtime
3h 0m
Genres
Romance, Drama
Director
A. Bhimsingh

Casting

Interesting facts

Kalathur Kannamma is a 1960 Indian Tamil-language romantic drama film directed by A. Bhimsingh and written by Javar Seetharaman. The film stars Gemini Ganesh, Savitri Ganesh and Kamal Haasan with the latter in his debut. It revolves around a couple — a wealthy zamindar's son and a farmer's daughter — who are separated due to circumstances, while their innocent son is brought up in an orphanage.

Production

After assisting A. V. Meiyappan in producing films for AVM Productions, his sons Saravanan, Murugan, Kumaran discussed producing one on their own with his son-in-law Arun Veerappan. Their mother Rajeswari told Meiyappan about this, and he gave his consent. The first story the brothers discussed was Maanam Periyadhu, but it did not shape up well. Unwilling to make a half-baked story as their inaugural production, Saravanan continued searching.

Impressed with T. Prakash Rao's work in Amara Deepam (1956) and Uthama Puthiran (1958), Saravanan and his brothers considered that he would be best suited to direct Kalathur Kannamma. This decision was questioned, given that AVM had its own "director unit" of which Prakash Rao was not a part.

Gemini Ganesan, his last name credited as Ganesh, was cast as Rajalingam and Savitri Ganesh as the title character Kannamma. The former was paid a salary of ₹75,000 (equivalent to ₹7.4 million or US$76,000 in 2026) after initially negotiating for ₹90,000 (equivalent to ₹8.8 million or US$92,000 in 2026).

The song "Kangalil Vaarthaigal Puriyatho" was shot with many mango trees in the background. When it was decided to reshoot parts of the song, the mangoes were no longer in the trees since the season had ended. Hence, it was decided to reshoot the necessary scenes with fake mangoes hanging from the trees. The first shot filmed on Haasan was a scene featuring Kannamma feeding him upma.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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