The history of film studios in Chennai can never miss to include AVM Productions, which has rolled out a battery of blockbusters since the black and white era to recent times. The man behind this huge production house, Av. Meiyappa Chettiar, aka, AV Meiyappan, is considered one of the pioneers of Tamil Cinema.
To commemorate his 113th birth anniversary on July 28, his production house, AVM Productions, has planned to release a documentary on his life and work.
M. Saravanan, his son, who now heads AVM Productions shared interesting anecdotes about his father.
“Till now, we have produced 175 films. It’s our pride to have had five Chief Ministers working in our productions. Arignar Anna wrote the story and dialogue for the film Oar Iravu, Kalaingar Karunanidhi penned the dialogue for Prasakti, MGR played the hero of Anbe Vaa, N.T. Rama Rao, acted in Bhoo Kailash, Naathi Aada Jenmame, Ramu and Chitti Selalu and Jayalalitha played the female lead in Anaadhai Anandan, Enga Mama and Major Chandrakanth.
Av. Meiyappan was the first in the country to produce a dubbed film — Harishchandra. It was dubbed in Tamil from the original in Kannada. He was one of the pioneers, who introduced playback singing in the Tamil industry (film Nandakumar) and new singers like Lalitha Venkataraman.
A stickler for perfection, Av. Meiyappan would go for re-shoots of scenes if he was not satisfied. He was also punctual and expected the same from the artistes and technicians in his production house.
He introduced several welfare measures for the workers in his production house. He gave them cycles for easy commuting, created living spaces, opened a grocery shop, started the ‘Avichi’ school for their children and set up AVM Clinic and Mena Marriage Hall.
Yesteryear playback singer P. Susheela would always say that it was because of Av. Meiyappan that she has been able to sing Tamil songs with perfect diction. Some of the directors, who under his guidance, made it big in the tinsel world are M.V. Raman, K. Shankar, P. Neelakandan, Bhim Singh, A.C. Thirulokchander, Sp. Muthuraman, Rama Narayanan and Rajasekar. The list includes actors such as T.R. Mahalingam, Sivaji Ganesan, Kannada hero Raj kumar, S.S.R., Kamal Haasan, V.K. Ramaswamy, Sivakumar, Vyjayanthimala, Sachu and Kutti Padmini.
“My father used to say that A-V-M are not mere letters but five decades of his hard work. We are putting our best to keep the flag flying high,” concludes M. Saravanan.