Sravanthi Movies
Ladies Tailor (1986)
Technical Details:
Color
Reels: 14
Censor Date: November 25, 1986
Release Date: December 04, 1986
Duration: 2 hours 10 minutes
Cast:
Rajendra Prasad ... Sundaram
Archana ... Sujatha
Rallapalli (Guest) ... Addateegala Hanumanthu (Astrologer)
Y. Vijaya ... Nagamani
Deepa ... Daya
Sandhya ... Neelaveni
Gauri ... Sundari
Subhalekha Sudhakar ... Seetaramudu
(Late) Mallikarjuna Rao ...
baTTala Satyam
Pradeep Shakti ... Venkataratnam
Karnan ... Seenu
Tanikella Bharani ... Police
Dham ... Jambulingam
Pattabhi ... Varahala Rao (Neelaveni's father)
Other Cast: G.N. Murthy, Varalakshmi, Jhansi Rani, Nagamani, L.V. Ranga Rao, G. Satyanarayana, P. Venkateswarlu, Dr. Subbarayudu
Screenplay:
Vamsy, Tanikella Bharani, Vemuri Satyanarayana
Dialogues: Tanikella Bharani
Lyrics:
sirivennela Seetharama Shastry
Playback: S.P. Balasubrahmanyam, S.P. Sailaja, S. Janaki, Nagoor Babu (not credited)
Associate Director: Venkat Maddirala
Assistant Director: G. Sudhakara Rao
Art: Thota Associates, Thota Yadu
Editing: G.R. Anil Malnad
Camera: Hari Anumolu
Music: Ilayaraja
Production Designer: Vemuri Satyanarayana
Production Management:
tammuDu Satyam
Producer: K. Sarada Devi
Story, Direction: Vamsy
Songs:
vETaaanDadE oLLOkocchi chEpa chE~radu!
Playback: Nagoor Babu, Chorus
Cast: Rajendra Prasad
sundarii, endukE? iTTaa raavE!
iTTaa raavE! (
ekkaDa yekkaDa yekkaDa yekkaDa daakkunaavE...)
Playback: S.P. Balasubrahmanyam, Chorus
Cast: Rajendra Prasad, Gauri, Mallikarjuna Rao,
etc.
gOpiilOlaa, nee paala baDDaamuraa!
Playback: S.P. Balasubrahmanyam, S.P. Sailaja
Cast: Rajendra Prasad, Deepa, Sandhya, Y. Vijaya, Mallikarjuna Rao,
Subhalekha Sudhakar,
etc.
haayamma, haayammaa, haayammaa!
Playback: S.P. Balasubrahmanyam, S. Janaki
Cast: Rajendra Prasad, Y. Vijaya, Sandhya, Deepa, Mallikarjuna Rao,
Subhalekha Sudhakar,
etc.
ekkaDa yekkaDa yekkaDa yekkaDa daakkunaavE...
Playback: S.P. Balasubrahmanyam
porapaaTidi, taDabaaTidi! gunjiLLu teeseyyanaa!
Playback: S.P. Balasubrahmanyam, S. Janaki
Cast: Rajendra Prasad, Archana
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| Director Vamsy on sets with artistes |
Story:
Lazy tailor Sundaram, who believes astrology a lot, is told that his fate changes if he marries a girl with a mole on the right thigh. His profession of being a ladies tailor seems like a nice ploy to identify such a woman among those that knew him well enough in the village. He tries to find if the woman would be one of the three women that grow close to him - Nagamani, Daya, or Neelaveni - but it's none of them. The local goon Venkataratnam's assistant Seenu is awaiting his boss's release from the prison, and keeps a watchful eye on Sundaram, as his antics seem to be close to sexual harrassment, which Venkataratnam detests. While innocent Sundaram falls in love with the newly arrived Sujatha teacher, Venkataratnam's mentally retarded sister Sundari, who is also close to Sundaram, gets pregnant. How Sundaram clears himself off Seenu's suspicions and convinces Sujatha to get married forms the rest of the story that starts off as a comedy flick and slowly turns into a suspsense thriller without losing the comedy flavour.
Vamsy goes down the memory lane...
Archana came to audition for the film
Sitaara but Bhanupriya was chosen for the role. I saw her later in the Malayalam film
Yaatra (later remade in Telugu as
Nireekshana) where Balu Mahendra showed her beautifully and I thought she'd suit perfectly to the role. Dubbing Janaki's sister Lakshmi dubbed for her in the film. ...I knew Deepa before I made the film and we chose her when she was slimmer (than what she appears in the film). We saw that she grew a bit heavy by the time of the shoot but we had to go ahead with her still for the role of Daya. ...Sandhya came to our office along with some production manager who recommended her for the role saying she hails from Guntur and has appreciable diction. Before acting in our project, she acted in a film by veteran director C.S. Rao
gaaru but that film never saw the light of the day. Pattabhi who acted as her father was a stage artiste. When I liked the eyes of a perfume-seller Karnan who went about cine production offices, I offered him the role of Seenu. He initially said that he doesn't know acting but I made him do the role. For Tanikella Bharani's role, our original choice was Nutan Prasad gaaru but he had a clash of dates in the last minute and he could not come to the shooting. We then got the dresses altered for Bharani, as they were originally stitched for Nutan Prasad, and got him to do the role. ...Pradeep Shakthi was a colleague of cameraman Hari Anumolu when working with Ashok Kumar (cameraman and director of films like
Mouna Geetham). I saw him acting in a miniscule role in some Malayalam film and liked him. When Hari Anumolu introduced him to me as his friend, I took him for the film
Aalaapana. Though that film was a flop, I liked his acting and cast him in most of my films including
Ladies Tailor. Rallapalli was originally supposed to play just an astrologer, but it was Bharani who changed the role to a tribal chief (
kOya dora). We asked Rallapalli, who was in Madras, to get photographs taken with who's who of the film industry in the tribal getup; his dialogue "
...pakkana nEnu" became very famous. Thanks to the magic of Bharani, his guest role got a lot of attention!
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Most part of the movie was done in and around Rajolu, Thatipaka, and Manepalli of West Godavari district. While Rajendra Prasad's house was in Manepalli, Y. Vijaya's house was in the interior of another village. When we finished the shoot, we realized that it was of shorter duration than we hoped and shot additional scenes at Arunchala Studio in Madras. These shots include the ones with cameraman Dham, the dreaming of King, and so on. Tailors of our childhood times used to wear pajamahs and shirts that were stitched together from the cut pieces from other tailored clothing. That's what we showed in the movie 25 years ago, but now things have changed drastically; they are more fashionable than most city-dwellers today. Ilayaraja was very busy at that time and we were so hard-pressed for time that we could not halt shooting until he finished composing. Thus, I went ahead and shot the song ekkaDa yekkaDa... keeping in mind his way of music composing, and he composed the song based on the visuals. I also wanted a bit song depicting the protagonist's character as the titles appeared. Ilayaraja composed the song and asked Nagoor Babu, who was working with him back then, to sing the bit. He thus sang for the film but his name doesn't appear in the titles.
