‘Poverty pushed MGR into acting profession’

Dec. 21: One of the best interviews of late chief minister MGR was the one done by his successor Ms Jayalalithaa for a Tamil film magazine in 1968. She was just 20 then. Twenty-two years after his death, the interviews of MGR have been compiled in book form for the first time.
Thanks to 15 years of work by Mr S. Kirubagaran, a researcher on Dravidian writings, the interviews of the Dravidian matinee idol are accessible now. The collection is the first available document of MGR in his own words.
“I chose to start the book with the interview done by Ms Jayalalithaa for Bommai magazine in 1968 as it is the most frank interview of MGR. He says poverty pushed him into acting at age six,” Mr Kirubagaran told this newspaper.
In that interview to Ms Jayalalithaa, MGR talks about his visits to Tirupati and his first meeting with Mr Karunanidhi as dialogue writer at Coimbatore during the shooting of Abhimanyu in which MGR played Arjuna, a minor role.
The book, published by Aazhi, deals with interviews to the media between 1959 and 1984 and captures MGR’s insistence on state autonomy, his criticism of heavy income tax, his frankness about not knowing Hindi or English, his love for books, the reason for his wearing headdress, his split from the DMK, etc.
MGR’s knowledge of Tamil, his praise for Kanchi Chandrasekharendra Saras-wati Swamigal and his support of reservation for all economically weaker people including Brahmins are now documented.