All hit dialogues of MGR were penned by Karunanidhi

Eighty years in public life and 60 years of political life - it all started for Karunanidhi in the film industry when he was 23. His cinema career spanned from 'Rajakumari' in 1947 to 'Ponnar Sankar' in 2011. Starting from legendary actor Sivaji Ganesan to actor Prashanth, Karunanidhi had worked with nearly three generations of actors. Ganesan attained fame in his debut movie only through the dialogues of Karunanidhi.

In the same way, M. Gopalan Ramchandran attained fame in the movie 'Rajakumari' through the dialogues of Karunanidhi. He was later popularly called MGR. Karunanidhi and MGR were the opposite poles of Tamil Nadu politics during their period. But initially, they were inseparable friends during their cinema careers.

In the earlier days, MGR was highly attracted towards the policies and ideologies of Congress. But later he was convinced by Karunanidhi to get a belief in 'Dravidian' policies and ideology. MGR started his acting career in 1936. Before attaining his fame through 'Rajakumari' in Karunanidhi's dialogues, MGR had already done 14 movies. Yet, he was struggling to get proper recognition.

It was a period when the Tamil movie industry was filled with mythology stories. Only through Karunanidhi, the Tamil movie industry took a turn towards history. For the first time, audiences were introduced to power-packed Tamil dialogues in movies. The sharp dialogue in movies written by Karunanidhi attracted more people. At the same time, Karunanidhi was highly busy with his political activities. Even when he was a busy dialogue writer, he continued to participate in at least 2 political meetings in a week.

Initially, no one in the movie industry was aware of his political activities. Later, MGR found that Karunanidhi kept on getting missing in the movie locations and investigated him in person. From then onwards MGR started to spend more time with Karunanidhi.

There is an interesting story. When 'Rajakumari' was released, Karunanidhi's father Muthuvel was eager to watch it. But Karunanidhi hesitated to take his father to the movie since his vision was not that good due to old age. But his father replied that Karunanidhi wasn't the one who directed the movie for me to see. Rather he penned the dialogues for the movie which he was able to hear in the theatre. Then he visited the theatre and heard the movie through his son's dialogues. He appreciated his son very much.

The major hits of MGR like 'Mandhirikumari' and 'Malaikallan' were embellished with the dialogues of Karunanidhi. They both worked together in nine movies. During that period, MGR used to call Karunanidhi 'Aandavare' (which roughly means god). Karunanidhi later at the age of 90 shared his experience with MGR in an article which got published in Frontline magazine on 18th October 2013.

In the article, he mentioned, "MGR was introduced as a leading actor in the movie 'Rajakumari'. But he acted in nearly 14 movies before that. I befriended MGR, a disciple of Gandhi during that tenure. I would give him the books of Anna and he would give me the books of Gandhiji. We often indulge in political discussions and as a result, he involved himself in the Dravidian movement.''

''While living in Coimbatore with my wife Padma in a 10-rupee rental home, I had the opportunity to write more for films. When the movie 'Abhimanyu' was released with my dialogues, I took my wife and friends to the theatre. But I wasn't given any credit for the movie. So I immediately vacated my home and returned to my native Thiruvarur," he wrote.

"A movie called 'Naam' was about the working community. MGR was the leading actor and I penned the dialogues. The movie was filled with highly motivating and powerful communist ideologies. In the movie, he made MGR speak communism in his own way with so many punch dialogues," Karunanidhi has narrated this beautiful chapter of his life in the article.