Dadasaheb Phalke, popularly known as the father of Indian cinema made the first full-length Indian feature film titled Raja Harischandra in 1913, the film was based on the mythological Indian King Harishchandra. The cast of the film was entirely male and the makers couldn’t find a woman to play the female roles. Even though the first decade of the 20th century India was under the spell of the Nationalist Swadeshi movement and various localized social reform movements, several doors remained shut for women.
In November 1911, a girl child born in a small village in Thiruvaiyaru, Tamilnadu would break many of these barriers to emerge as the first woman to get the honorific title “Cinema Rani”.She was the first actress, director, producer, and scriptwriter of Tamil cinema.
T. P. Rajalakshmi was born in a orthodox brahmin family under abysmal poverty. As a child, she possessed a gift to sing whichever song she heard.
Her family couldn’t educate her beyond primary school and she had to enter a child marriage that ended soon after her father’s untimely death. The failed marriage and poor living conditions forced her to enter the theatre world braving social ostracism and stigma.
Rajalakshmi's first stage role was in ‘Pavalakkodi’, a play later made into a film, introduced many stars of the era including M. K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar, S. D. Subbulakshmi, and its director K. Subrahmanyam.
Rajalakshmi got her first cinema role in 1931 when she was cast as the heroine in the Bilingual talkie, Kalidas, the first talkie in Tamil and Telugu. The film was a runaway success and she became the most sought-after artist of the era.
Films like Valli Thirumanam(1933), Harichandra(1935), Madurai Veeran(1939), Kovalan(1933) are based on modern and folk theatre adapted to the screen and are culturally significant. They ensured the continuity of traditional voices of mythos and ethos. Rajalakshmi also wrote, directed, and produced Miss Kamala(1936), the first woman to do so in South Indian cinema.
Like many of the films of that era, most of Rajalakshmi’s films are lost, few gramophone records and print media archives have survived. We get a sense of her huge legacy primarily through oral history and anecdotes from members of her own family and the artistic world.
T. P. RajalakshmiRoja Muthiah Research Library
Her pioneering contributions to theatre, literature, cinema, social reform, and the independence movement are indispensable to the modern Tamil consciousness.
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