Madurai: Another brick and mortar piece of history slipped into oblivion Monday with the bulldozing of the Chinthamani theatre in East Veli street beginning to bring the edifice down. A great cinematic tradition of people turning out to watch movies in a popular movie thus comes to an end.
The cinema house exhibited films of the legends M.G. Ramachandran and Sivaji Ganesan, enthralling movie lovers. Kamal Haasan has even ‘performed’ here once, dancing on the stage to celebrate the success of his first movie as a child star.
The theatre was built by N.M.R. Venkatakrishnaier and N.M.R. Seshaier. They were also partners in the Royal Talkies, a famous movie production company in the early 20th century which was instrumental in launching another icon of Tamil culture M.S. Subbulakshmi in films. The theatre itself was named after a successful film by the name of Chinthamani by the same production house. It was opened to the public on May 13, 1939 after being officially inaugurated by the then British collector.
The inaugural movie was an English feature film and some of the films last shown here were Kushi, Alavandhan and Dhool. “It was with the profit earned by producing cum releasing the film Chinthamani featuring the famous actor M.K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar that our grandfathers built this theatre and named it after the movie,” M.N.C. Nageswaran (66), grandson of later N.M.R. Venkatakrishnaier told DC.
