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Gunsundari Katha

1949 172’ b&w Telugu d/co-sc K.V. Reddy pc Vauhini co-sc K. Kameshwara Rao st Shakespeare’s King Lear dial/lyr Pingali Nagendra Rao c Marcus Bartley m Ogirala Ramchandra Rao lp Govindrajulu Subba Rao, Shantakumari, K. Siva Rao, Malathi, Relangi Venkatramaiah, Sriranjani Jr., T.G. Kamala, Hemalatha, Lakshmirajyam Jr., Seeta, Balijepalli Lakshmikanta Kavi

Freewheeling adaptation of Lear by fantasist K.V. Reddy. The royal patriarch (Subba Rao) is offended by his youngest daughter Gunsundari (Sriranjani) when she pledges unconditional loyalty to her future husband. He has her married to a deaf and dumb cripple (Siva Rao) who is in fact a perfectly healthy youth living under a curse. The king is stricken with a mysterious illness and his three sons-in-law set out to discover the Mahendramani jewel which will cure him. When the youngest son-in-law finds it, the other two steal it and magically change the third into a bear. Gunsundari eventually succeeds in lifting the curse upon her husband. The music of the big-budget Vauhini film is particularly successful, with V.A.K. Ranga Rao claiming Ogirala’s composition Eevanilo to be the most unusual song in the history of Telugu cinema. The scenarist K. Kameshwara Rao later remade it in Tamil (Gunsundari, 1955) starring Gemini Ganesh and Savitri.

Film