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Tenali Ramakrishna/ Tenali Raman
1956 204’[Te]/195’[Ta] b&w Telugu/Tamil/? Kannada d/p/c B.S. Ranga pc Vikram Prod. st Based on C.K. Venkataramaiah’s play sc/dial[Te]/lyr[Te] Samudrala Raghavacharya dial[Ta] Kannadasan, Murugadasa m Vishwanathan-Ramamurthy lp P. Bhanumathi, Jamuna, N.T. Rama Rao, A. Nageshwara Rao[Te], Chittor V. Nagaiah[Te], Surabhi Balasaraswathi[Te], Sivaji Ganesan[Ta], T.S. Dorairaj[Ta], Rajkumar[K], Balkrishna[K], Sandhya, K. Mukkamala
Megabudget trilingual featuring the legendary folk hero and jester in the government of Krishnadeva Raya, king of the Vijayanagara Empire 1509-30. The Bahamani Kingdom, in a protracted war with Vijayanagara, sends the dancer and courtesan Krishnasani (Bhanumathi) to seduce the king (NTR) and to spy on him. The king falls in love with her and only an elaborate ruse by Tenali Ramakrishna (Nageshwara Rao/Ganesan/Rajkumar?) and Chief Minister Timmarasu (Nagaiah/Dorairaj/? Balkrishna), another legendary figure (and the subject of an independent film biography by K. Kameshwara Rao in 1962), in which they disguise themselves as a holy man and his disciple, enables the king to realise the truth. Bhanumathi’s musical presence was again the film’s star attraction. The story had been filmed by H.M. Reddy in 1941.