Originally Posted by abkhlabhi
SIVAJI & PADMINI: a retrospective
A BHARAT remembers a screen duo whose careers took off at the same time and who shared an empathy that continued to flourish through all the films the two acted in together.
Let us begin this survey with a breezy romantic exchange between a young man called Sunder whom we discover lying in bed with a book in an obvious effort to swot up for his examination and the young girl called Sumati who happens to be the daughter of his landlord and who has just come upstairs with a cup of coffee to help him keep awake. The young man takes a sip, and looking up at her eager face, says, “Sumati, this coffee is just like you; your innocent heart resembles the milk, your qualities resemble the sugar in it, and.. and-” As he hesitates, desperately searching for the appropriate word to complete his simile she she helpfully supplies the word, “and my colour resembles the coffee powder?”.
When we were watching this witty sequence featuring Sivaji Ganesan and Padmini, back in November 1954, in Saravanabhava & Unity Films’ Classic Ethirparathathu, we had no reason to suspect that this romantic partnership which had begun hardly two years earlier in a tepid fashion in a mediocre film called Panam was to span three decades, chalk up dozens of films and become a legendary one.
Sivaji had burst into films in Parasakti (51) and in his very next film had gained Padmini as his partner. She however had been in that business for a long time. Throughout the 40s she had been appearing in dance sequences in AVM films playing second fiddle to her successful elder sister Lalita. She got an adult lead role in Manamagal the same year as Sivaji. And next year when she appeared as the other woman in Kanchana where her fragile beauty simply put the heroine in the shade.
If the Sivaji-Padmini duo did not take off in their initial pairing in Panam, they really got the show going in their second film Anbu (53). The film was actually centered around T. R Rajakumari who played Sivaji’s brother’s wife, but the romantic scenes were all given to the new pair. Who can forget the scene where Sivaji climbs up the stairs to the opening bars of Padmini’s piano playing and within the span of the song “enna enna inbame” adds impromptu notes on the piano, decorates her hair with a rose and finally persuades her to accept his proposal - all
without a line of dialogue?
1954 was not only a vintage year for the Tamil cinema with Anda Naal (Sivaji) Malaikallan (MGR) and Koondukkili (MGR & Sivaji) -- it was also a bumper year for our romantic pair. Out of the seven Sivaji films four featured Padmini as the female lead.
In Karunanidhi’s Illara Jothi Padmini was an heiress obsessed with a married Sivaji. As was the fashion in those days the film had a play within the film. And this time it was-Anarkali. The three pages of lamentation Sivaji pours out on Anarkali’s tomb used to boom out of thousands loudspeakers all over the south as was also the fashion then when the dialogue sets of the films used to be issued on records along with the songs.
B R Panthulu began his series of films featuring Sivaji that year with Kalyanam Panniyum Brahmachari, a rip roaring comedy in which Sivaji completely outshone the titular comedian T R Ramachandran. But Padmini put both of them in their places with a dazzling performance aptly symbolized by the romantic duet “Medhaavi pole” wherein she makes Sivaji literally slap his cheeks and beg her pardon.
Then there was Thookku Thooklu an old chestnut about five riddles which was given fresh life by a witty script, lovely music by G Ramanathan, the enchanting presence of Padmini with her sisters and an over-the-board performance by Sivaji. He also found his “voice” T M Sounderrajan in that film. Sivaji being a trained dancer himself found no difficulty in keeping pace with Padmini and Ragini in the hilarious “Kurangilirundu pirandavan” dance sequence.
The fourth film that year was Ethirparathathu, which was C V Sridhar’s first film script and which was specifically tailored to fit the talents of the three principals Sivaji, Padmini and Nagaiah. Starting like a romantic comedy the film abruptly turns into tragic paths midway with Sivaji reported dead in a plane crash and Padmini marrying his aged
father Nagaiah. When a blind Sivaji returns to claim his romantic due he encounters a stubborn Padmini with her own ideas of marital rectitude. In a climactic sequence, in pouring rain Sivaji pours ot his heart in a reprise of their earlier romantic song “Sirpi sedukkada por silaiye”. Drawn irresistibly by that haunting refrain Padmini rushes out
to him and for a few minutes allows herself to participate in his fantasy. Suddenly snapping out of the dream and suffering a terrible reaction she literally slaps poor Sivaji around savagely and leaving him hurt and sodden in the mud runs back to the house. Never before or after in their long partnership did they reach the emotional intensity of
this early film.
Kaveri (55) was a lighter film remarkable only for the reprise of Sivaji’s Bharatanatyam. Towards the end, in a dance sequence, the repetition of the heroine’s name makes Sivaji regain his memory reminding us of Dilip Kumar’s Shabnam.
The same year the pair chalked up a hit in Mangigyar Tilakam, which was adapted from Bhabhi ki Choodiyan. Here Padmini played the role which Rajakumari had played in Anbu a couple of years back. Their excellent performances and the melodious score makes for an extremely satisfying film with Padmini’s visual rendition of the song “Neelavanna kanna vaada” unforgettably stamped on our mental screen.
Raja Rani (56) with a script by Karunanidhi was an absolutely entertaining Comedy package with a paper-thin coating of social comment regarding widow remarriage. In true Roman Holiday style Sivaji gives lodging to a drugged and sleepy Padmini and mistakes her to be a runaway heiress leading to various complications concerning
the other comedy team of N S Krishnan -- T A Maduram. This film had two plays within it, of which the second -- Socrates -- is justly famous. When the villain Rajendran tries to use this play to feed “Socrates” Sivaji with some real “hemlock”, it is the watchful Krishnan who collars him and brings about a happy ending.
Again in 1957 Karunanidhi came out with an entertaining script for our pair in Pudayal in which Sivaji played a postman. lt had the novel situation of a love-sick Chandrababu sending translations of Shakespeare’s love poems to Padmini who promptly tore them off without reading them to the ire of the Shakespeare fan Sivaji who read them aloud to her thereby starting their romance.
When the writer Sridhar began his own company called Venus Pictures his first film was Uttama Puthiran (58) based on The Man in the Iron Mask in which Sivaji played more than one role for the first time in his career. The film had a lovely Padmini, lilting music by G Ramanathan with songs like “Mullai malar mele” and picturisation of a Padmini dance in Brindavan Gardens.
Through the years Sivaji acted with other heroines like Pandari Bai, Bhanumati, Savitri and so on, and Padmini had her own series of films with Gemini Ganesan and MGR. But that did not stop the regular flow of Sivaji –Padmini films like Bhagyavati (57),Thangppadumai (58) which had an early Viswanathan-Ramamurty score featuring songs including “mugattil mugam paarkkalaam”, Maragadam (59) where Padmini feigns a “dual” role, Deivapiravi (60) with Sivaji as a contractor and Padmini as a coolie etc.
It is appropriate enough that a legendary partnership should have a classic Finale. There was a popular serial in Ananda Vikatan by Kottamangalam Subbu called Tillana Mohanambal about a Nadaswaram player and a dancer which literally called out for the talents of Sivaji and Padmini. Since neither of them were now in their early youth
the emphasis was now on their acting and dancing abilities. In his usual thorough manner Sivaji spent months watching and perfecting the mannerisms of a Nadaswaram player. His performance in the film is so lifelike one is instantly reminded of the exactly similar situation of James Stewart playing the title role in the film The Glenn Miller
Story. In both cases the nadaswaram and trombone playing looked genuine enough to fool even experts.
The Sivaji-Padmini partnership was remarkable in that their careers began almost simultaneously and had a parallel progress and right from their second film together they had developed an empathy which continued to flourish in all their films. lt is significant that even though Padmini did a large number of films with, say, Gemini Ganesan, nobody talks of a Gemini-Padmini duo. There is only a Sivaji-Padmini duo. And that’s it.