On March 10, 1972, MGR’s Nalla Neram hit the theatres. The film was directed by M A Thirumughaam and produced by Sandow M M A Chinappa Thevar. It involved a variety of animals such as a dog, monkey, lion, cow, snake, a goat, leopard and an elephant. Thevar strongly believed that putting animals in a movie would entertain the audience more than humans ever could. With the same notion, he also produced the superhit film Haathi Mere Saathi, starring Rajesh Khanna. The story behind how the film came through was more interesting than the movie’s screenplay itself.
Thevar produced several films, and a lot of them were between MGR’s Thaikubin Bin Thaaram in 1956 to Jaishankar’s Mannavan in 1970. During that period, AVM and Nagareddy’s Vijaya Productions were producing films in Hindi. Thevar also decided to make one and the actor he eyed was Rajesh Khanna.
Rajesh was one of the leading names in the industry back then, and he was building his dream home called Aashirwad. Knowing that he was in need of money, Thevar paid the full amount for the construction of the house as a salary. Rajesh couldn’t resist the film’s offer and told Thevar he was ready to do it. But the story Thevar told did not please the actor.
In 1967, Thevar’s Deiva Cheyal was released, which starred R Sundarrajan and Muthuraman. But the story did not meet the success Thevar expected. But he had faith in the story and wanted to try it out in Hindi with Rajesh as the lead. The actor, due to his unhappiness with Thevar’s story, went to Salim Khan to get the story edited in a way that he would love. Salim and Javed Akhtar then came together and adapted the story into the Hindi version after tweaking some elements. This led to the making of the superhit Hindi film Haathi Mere Saathi with Rajesh in the lead role. It was in this movie that Salim and Javed got their due recognition for the first time.
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