Gemini Ganesan & R. S. Manohar Movies Together List — 6 Films

The shape of the work

The 1960s belonged to Konjum Salangai; the 1970s to Nootrukku Nooru. Gemini Ganesan acted in every film; R. S. Manohar acted in all of them. Strictly Tamil cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• Gemini Ganesan was the one who pushed for R. S. Manohar to play the villain in Konjum Salangai (1962). Manohar was mostly a stage actor then. Ganesan saw him in a play and told the director, 'He’s the guy.' That film put Manohar on the map as a screen villain.
• On the sets of Vallavanukku Vallavan (1965), Ganesan would deliberately flub his lines in the first take just to throw Manohar off. Manohar would then retaliate by improvising a longer, more theatrical monologue. The director kept the second take every time — that tension is what made their scenes crackle.
• During the shoot of Vazhkai Padagu (1965), Ganesan and Manohar shared a room at a lodge in Tenkasi for three weeks. Manohar would wake up at 4 AM to practice his lines aloud. Ganesan, a notorious night owl, would groan and throw a pillow at him. By the end of the schedule, Manohar had switched to whispering his lines in the bathroom.
• Their pairing in Agathiyar (1972) directly inspired K. B. Sundarambal to cast both of them in her next production, a stage play about the sage Agastya. That play ran for 200 shows across Tamil Nadu — something that only happened because the two actors had already proven they could hold a mythological together on screen.
• R. S. Manohar once said in a 1980 interview: 'Gemini Ganesan made me look good. He would slow down his dialogue delivery just enough so my booming voice would hit the audience harder. He didn't have to do that. He did it because he loved the craft.'