Major Sundarrajan & M. A. Thirumugam Movies Together List — 7 Films

The shape of the work

The 1960s belonged to Thunaivan; the 1980s to Ellam Un Kairasi. Major Sundarrajan acted in every film; M. A. Thirumugam directed all of them. Strictly Tamil cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• Thirumugam cast Sundarrajan in 'Akka Thangai' (1969) after seeing him play a villain in a stage play. Sundarrajan was so nervous on the first day of shoot that Thirumugam had to lock the camera room and talk him through the scene alone for 20 minutes.
• On the set of 'Thunaivan' (1969), Sundarrajan would rewrite his own dialogues in the morning and show them to Thirumugam. The director would then rewrite them again during lunch. They argued over every line but the final cut always had both their fingerprints — Sundarrajan's rhythm, Thirumugam's punch.
• After 'Deivam' (1972) flopped, Thirumugam didn't call Sundarrajan for two years. Sundarrajan showed up at his house unannounced with a bottle of arrack. They patched things up that night and made 'Komatha En Kulamatha' (1973) the next year — shot in 18 days on a borrowed camera.
• The success of 'Akka Thangai' (1969) directly led to Thirumugam launching a young comedian named S. V. Sekhar in 'Maanavan' (1970). Sekhar later said in an interview that if not for that film, he would have quit cinema.
• In 'Ellam Un Kairasi' (1980), their last film together, Sundarrajan insisted on doing a 7-minute single-take monologue. Thirumugam bet him a bottle of whiskey he couldn't. Sundarrajan did it in one take. Thirumugam paid up on set.