T Rama Rao: The man who brought ‘Madras’ to ‘Bombay’

Tatineni Rama Rao was not a great filmmaker. He was something better. He was a very successful filmmaker who understood that the business of cinema depended on being at the right place at the right, frequently trite, time.

His films were role models of calendar-art wholesome family pictures. Of course, you would find the mandatory quota of oomph in them when required. But most of Rao’s cinema was about recreation rather than titillation. Like Manmohan Desai, Rama Rao believed cinema was about providing elemental entertainment: the indoor equivalent of a family picnic . Like Desai, Rao was of the opinion that if the public wants to see art they would visit an art gallery. His entire career as a filmmaker was devoted to mass entertainment.

Starting with the Telugu Navarathri in 1966 Rao directed seventy films in Telugu and Hindi most of them successful. Navarathri which featured Nagarjuna’s father Akkineni Nageswara Rao in nine roles was a superhit. Its Hindi version Naya Din Nayi Raat directed by A Bhim Singh, released 8 years later with Sanjeev Kumar in the nine roles, was a miserable flop.

It was widely believed in the film trade that a remake of a T Rama Rao Telugu film in Hindi only worked if T Rama Rao directed it. Jeetendra who has the best business acumen in Hindi cinema sensed the market potential of Telugu remakes: he got T Rama Rao to direct him in Telugu-to-Hindi ten remakes, most of which them successful.

Jeetendra’s association with T Rama Rao began in 1979 with Lok Parlok a remake of the Telugu supernatural hit Yamagola with Jeetendra stepping into N T Rama Rao’s chappals. The success of Lok Parlok spurred the Jeetendra-T Rama Rao collaboration with more Telugu-to-Tamil trans-moneyspinners.

In 1980-81 Rama Rao directed Jeetendra in three hits: Judaai, Ek Hi Bhool and Maang Bharo Sajna all three with the same leading lady Rekha and targeted at women and family audiences.

Jeetendra acknowledges T Rama Rao’s contribution to his career. “In the 1970s and 1980s I was shooting nonstop in Hyderabad for Hindi remakes of Telugu hits, many of them directed by T Rama Rao. We were so fine-tuned to one another’s craft that we knew exactly what we wanted from one another.”

Sadly, T Rama Rao’s tuning with Rajinikanth was not as successful. They worked in the Hindi remake of John Jani Janardhan(the title was taken from Amitabh Bachchan’s song in Manmohan Desai’s Naseeb) in which Rajinikanth had a triple role and Bulandi(where Rajinikanth was paired with Rekha for the first and last time). Both bombed.

Rama Rao’s only successful Hindi film with Rajinikanth was Andha Kanoon which was Rajinikanth’s debut film in Hindi, and perhaps the biggest success in Hindi for Rao, it worked so resoundingly because of Amitabh Bachchan’s extended guest appearance. Amitabh Bachchan recalls how his role as Jan Nissar Akhtar (named after Javed Akhtar’s great poet-father) started as a mere cameo, then it grew into an “extended guest appearance” and finally it was the film’s USP.

Hema Malini who played a cop in Andha Kanoon recalls T Rama Rao fondly, “He was very hardworking, polite and considerate. I didn’t get to work with him much. I think Rekha worked a lot with him. But I really liked my role in Andha Kanoon. I got to play a brave cop. It was like any hero’s role. Rajinikanth played my brother. I didn’t have a romantic interest in Andha Kanoon.”

Rekha, who worked in a number of films directed by T Rama Rao, was given one of her career’s best roles in Rao’s Jeevan Dhara in 1982. She played a woman who sacrifices personal happiness to look after her family. That the performance is not counted among Rekha’s finest, is indicative of the snobbery that separates commercial cinema from its more elitist offshoots.

T Rama Rao was never interested in niche harkatein. He was an unabashed chronic mainstreamer, so much so that in 1984 he created history by directing two films based on the same plot. Amitabh Bachchan’s Inquilaab and Jeetendra’s Yeh Desh in 1984 were both remakes of the same Telugu film Eenadu. Both were directed by T Rama Rao. The race to finish and release first was won by Inquilaab. Yeh Desh which started shooting much earlier, released a month after Inquilaab. It flopped. Many in the industry believed T Ram Rao sabotaged the box office chances of his own Yeh Desh to boost Inquilaab.

We would never know the real truth. Or for that matter, we would never know why T Rama Rao's last Hindi film was titled Beti No 1 when it featured a male actor Govinda in the lead.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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