Sri MGR Year 94, 11th January, Wednesday
MGR Devotee Sailesh Basu forwarded a post written by Randor Guy who is a movie historian and a critic. Below is the excerpt from his post titled “The Indian Movie Mogul – A.V.Meiyappan”.
Some years ago an American media expert went on record that he was the second most well-known Indian after Indira Gandhi. No movie star anywhere in the world has created so much history as he did. The top superstar of Tamil cinema he turned politician and became the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu more than once. M.G.Ramachandran acted in hundreds of films and his box-office track record is amazing. The percentage of his flops is extremely low when compared to that of stars of his day.
He was born in Kandy, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in a lower-middle class family that had been looking, forward to a happy life in that island country when tragedy struck. His father died suddenly and his poor deprived widow, Sathyabhama decided to return to her native land with her three small children and little else. She settled in the temple town, Kumbakonam where her sons, Chakrapani and Ramachandran attended school. But life for Sathyabhama and her kids was a long struggle. Money was scarce and making both ends meet was a daily challenge. One day she realized that she could not send her boys to school anymore and they would have to make their own way in the wide world.
