The makers of the dubbed film ‘Mark Antony boasted of showcasing yesteryear's sexy siren Silk Smitha in their time travel film since it was set in the 1990s’ but her blink-and-miss appearance in the gangster movie was quite disappointing for Telugu viewers.
“The makers found her look-a-like and promoted her prior to the release of the film. But in the film, she is seen on a bus and speaks a few dialogues before the action sequence takes over. Her role almost goes unnoticed and disappoints Telugu audience,” says a distributor, who claims that Silk Smitha had a huge following in the two Telugu states in the 70s and 80s. “Her sensuous item numbers like ‘Gundellu Theesina Bantu, “Bhavalu Sayya’ and ‘Ee Petaku Nene Mestri’ were chartbusters as she swayed the audience of their feet with her seductive dance moves,” he adds.
She also played meaty roles in Telugu movies like ‘Seethakoka Chilaka’ and ‘Yamakinkarudu’ but she was the most sought-after actor for item numbers. “She was born in Eluru in Andhra Pradesh and her original name was Vijayalakshmi Vadlapatla before rechristened as Silk Smitha. She did more than 400 films in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Hindi before she was found dead in her Chennai apartment in 1996,” he points out.
Nowadays, with top heroines like Tammanah, Shruti Haasan, and Kajal doing item numbers, the breed of item girls is gradually diminishing in Tollywood, he concludes.
