''Illara Jothi'' () is a 1954 Indian

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...

-language film, directed by G. R. Rao and produced by

Modern Theatres Modern Theaters Ltd was an Indian film studio in Salem, Tamil Nadu started by T. R. Sundaram Mudaliar in 1935. The studio produced over more than 150 films until 1982 in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi, Sinhalese and even English of w ...

. The film stars

Sivaji Ganesan Villupuram Chinnaiya Manrayar Ganesamoorthy, better known by his stage name Sivaji Ganesan, (1 October 1928 – 21 July 2001) was an Indian actor and producer. He was active in Tamil cinema during the latter half of the 20th century. Sivaji Ga ...

, Padmini and

Sriranjani Sriranjani is a ragam in Carnatic music (musical scale of South Indian classical music). It is a hexatonic scale (''shadava'' rāgam, which means "of six"). It is a derived scale (''janya'' rāgam), as it does not have all the seven ''swaras' ...

. It was released on 9 April 1954.

Plot

Cast

Cast according to the opening credits and the song book. ;Male cast *

as Manohar * Thangavelu as Nettilingam * K. K. Perumal as Professor * Thirupathisami as Savadhan Pillai * M. N. Krishnan as Monk * Ashokan as Mohan * Rama Rao as Ameena * Sethupathi as Unani Doctor * Kottapuli Jayaraman as Story Seer * Kittan as Publishing Boss * Soundar as Rajaman Singh * Raju ;Female cast * Padmini as Chitrakekha *

as Kaveri * C. K. Saraswathi as Anantha * Kamalam as Lakshmi ;Dance * Chandra-Kamala

Production

Anarkali Anarkali () was a legendary woman said to be loved by the 16th-century Mughal Prince Salim, who later became Emperor Jahangir. According to some accounts, Anarkali was the nickname of the courtesan Nadira Begum or Sharf-un-Nisa, though scho ...

Salim Salim, Saleem or Selim may refer to: People *Salim (name), or Saleem or Salem or Selim, a name of Arabic origin * Salim (poet) (1800–1866) * Saleem (playwright) (fl. 1996) *Selim I, Selim II and Selim III, Ottoman Sultans * Selim people, an e ...

drama appeared in a dance-song sequence in this film. Lyricist

Kannadasan Kannadasan (; 24 June 1927 – 17 October 1981) was an Indian philosopher, poet, film song lyricist, producer, actor, script-writer, editor, philanthropist, and is heralded as one of the greatest and most important lyricists in India. Freq ...

had claimed in his autobiography that M. Karunanidhi had plagiarised his script, when he (Kannadasan) was serving a jail sentence for his activism as a group leader for the

Kallakudi demonstration The Kallakudi demonstration was organised by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) on 15 July 1953 in Kallakudi in the erstwhile Tiruchirappalli district against naming the place as Dalmiapuram. Ramakrishna Dalmia, a businessman from Bihar, estab ...

. The

song book A song book is a book containing lyrics for songs. Song books may be simple composition books or spiral-bound notebooks. Music publishers also produced printed editions for group singing. Such volumes were used in the United States by piano manuf ...

, however, does not include Karunanidhi's name for his contribution.

Soundtrack

The music was composed by G. Ramanathan. Lyrics were by Kannadasan.

References

External links

* {{Modern Theatres 1950s Tamil-language films 1954 drama films 1954 films Indian drama films Films scored by G. Ramanathan