Bengaluru: With 142 films to her credit in Tamil, Telugu, English and Kannada, J. Jayalalithaa was a superstar even before she became a colossus of Tamil Nadu politics.
Acting ran in the family with her mother Sandhya acting in movies and plays. Sandhya was a career artist in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada films and did not taste much success. What made Jaya debut as a child artiste in movies was by pure accident.
Kannada film historians say that Sandhya, who was playing a supporting role in ‘Shri Shaila Mahathme’, had brought along little Jayalalithaa to the sets. As it happened, a child actor who was to play the role of a goddesses did not turn up and the film-makers requested Sandhya to let Jayalalithaa dress up and act in the scene. The movie, directed by Aroor Pattabhi, was starring the giant of Kannada films Dr Rajkumar.
Tamil star Sivaji Ganesan, who was spellbound by Jayalalithaa’s Bharatnatyam arangetram, advised her to take up acting. Eventually, circumstances made her choose acting as a career, and again, she made her full-fledged acting debut in Kannada in 1964. The movie, Chinnada Gombe, was directed and produced by icon B.R. Panthulu.
In her entire movie career, she acted in five Kannada films – 'Chinnada Gombe', Mavana Magalu, directed by S.K.A. Chari, Nanna Karthavya, directed by Vedantham, and Badukuva Daari, all of them with Kalyan Kumar as lead. Badukuva Daari in 1966 was her last Kannada movie.
In fact, it was Panthulu who introduced Jayalalithaa to M.G. Ramachandran for his Tamil venture 'Aayirathil Oruvan' in 1965. Jaya and MGR, who later turned into her mentor in life and politics, were an instant hit and they acted in 28 movies, all of them blockbusters.
B. Saroja Devi, another actress from Karnataka who has also made it big in Tamil films and was a frequent leading lady in MGR’s films, fondly remembers her association with Jayalalithaa.
“Whenever we met, Jayalalithaa spoke to me in Kannada. She always informed me about her visits to Bengaluru through her security men. Once she even wished to visit me at my home in Bengaluru, but she had to leave following protests," she said.
It was an incident that occurred during the shooting of a Tamil film in Premier Studios in Mysuru which probably kept her away from Kannada films. Jaya had angered pro-Kannada activists by saying that she was a Tamilian, and spoke Kannada as she was born in Melukote.
Activists protested and demanded an apology from her, but a stubborn Jaya would have none of it and refused to retract her statement. Later, a movie, Chellida Rakhta, opposite Dr Rajkumar, had to be shelved because of that unsavoury incident.
