ANR Lives on: Sita Ramam makers pay a reverential tribute to the ever-lasting friendship between ANR and NTR

While Telugu cinema was incepted in the early 1930s and produced several greats like Chittoor Nagaiah, Kanchanamala, Bhanumathi, CSR Anjaneyulu in its early years, it took the arrival of two men - Akkineni Nageswara Rao and NT Rama Rao - to give us a taste of what film stardom looks like. The duo changed the face of the industry and helped it scale dizzying peaks in their era.

Commemorating ANR’s birth anniversary today, leading Telugu banner Vyjayanthi Movies, which has been in the news for Sita Ramam lately, released a special video, documenting several glimpses of the friendship that ANR and NTR shared on and off screen. The icing on the cake is a memorable voiceover by veteran actor, dubbing artiste Sai Kumar that provides authority to the video.

NTR and ANR’s on-screen collaboration is special for many reasons. Telugu cinema is the only industry where two of its most illustrious stars have come together for 15 multistarrers, starting from Palleturi Pilla in 1950 to Satyam Shivam in 1981. Some of their memorable films together were Gundamma Katha, Krishnarjuna Yuddham, Mayabazaar, Chanakya Chandragupta, to name a few.

The video released by Vyjayanthi Movies takes us through some of their most iconic sequences in all their films, offering a glimpse of the unmatched legacy they’ve left behind. Akkineni Nageswara Rao made his debut as a lead with the 1944 release Sri Seeta Rama Jananam directed by Ghantasala Balaramayya, the grandfather of composer S Thaman. His last film was Manam in 2013.

ANR acted in over 250 films in a career across seven decades in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi languages. While he was popular for his folklore films early on in his career, he came synonymous for his social films and family dramas over the years and was also nicknamed the ‘tragedy king’. He also played an instrumental role in shifting the industry from Madras to Hyderabad since the 1970s.