Subramaniam Srinivasan (4 January 1904 – 26 August 1969), popularly known by his screen name S. S. Vasan, was an Indian journalist, writer, advertiser, film producer, director and business tycoon. He was the founder of the Tamil-language magazine Ananda Vikatan and the film production company Gemini Studios, Gemini Film Laboratories and Gemini Picture Circuit. He was a member of parliament (Rajya Sabha) from 1964 until he died in 1969.
Vasan was born in Thiruthuraipoondi in the then Thanjavur District but was forced to migrate to Madras following the death of his father at an early age. Vasan discontinued his studies before graduation and set up a flourishing mail order and advertising business.
In 1928, Vasan purchased a struggling Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan that had been published by Budalur Vaidyanadhaiyar since February 1926 and had stopped publication in December 1927. Vasan bought the publication in January 1928 and relaunched it with the same name but in a different format from February 1928. Ananda Vikatan, subsequently, emerged as the leading Tamil magazine in the then Madras Presidency and continues to be the oldest and most respected Tamil magazine till this day.
Vasan entered the Tamil film industry in 1936 when his novel Sathi Leelavathi was made into a film.
In 1940, he purchased the Motion Picture Producers Combine, a film studio and renamed it Gemini Studios. Gemini Studios made a number of successful Tamil, Telugu and Hindi movies from 1940 to 1969, notable ones being , , Nandanaar, Bala Nagamma, Miss Malini, Chandralekha, , Nishaan, Mangala, Sansar, , , , Ghunghat, Grahasti, Gharana, , , Shatranj, , Motor Sundaram Pillai, , Chakradhari, Avvaiyar and . Vasan also directed some of his later movies, the first being Chandralekha, which is considered by critics and film historians to be a milestone in Indian cinema. Vasan died in Madras on 26 August 1969, at the age of 65.
Vasan was an accomplished writer and translator and a hugely successful journalist. As a director, Vasan was known for his grandiose sets and innovative techniques that he introduced. Film historian Randor Guy hailed Vasan as the "Cecil B. De Mille of India".
He was the first film and media personality to be invited to be a member of parliament in India's Rajya Sabha where he advocated the granting of industry status to the film trade (a battle still being fought). He was one of the founders of Film Federation India, Producer's Guild of India and the South Indian Film Chamber of Commerce. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1969, the year of his death, by the government of India for his extraordinary contribution to Indian media. The Government of India and the Postal department released postage stamps bearing his likeness on 26 August 2004, the year of his centenary.
Early life Vasan was born in the town of Thiruthuraipoondi, Thanjavur District into a brahmin family. While his official date of birth is listed as 10 March 1903, according to his family, he was born on 4 January 1904. Film historian Randor Guy suggested that Vasan's date of birth may have been deliberately fabricated to help in his school admission.
Ananda Vikatan By the late 1920s, Vasan had begun to make considerable profits and one of the magazines he advertised in (almost dominated) was a local Tamil humour magazine Ananda Bodhini with a circulation of about 2000. During this period, Vasan wrote a number of short stories for the Tamil magazines he brought advertisements for, with mixed success. He also translated popular English fiction and ran a successful mail order business.
In 1926, Budalur Vaidyanadhaiyar founded the Tamil satirical monthly Ananda Vikatan, but the publication soon ran into severe financial distress and subscription dropouts. In January 1928, advertising agent S.S. Vasan—who had paid for an unprinted advertisement—stepped in and bought the magazine's rights for Rs 200 (calculated at Rs 25 per Tamil alphabet). Vasan relocated the office, upgraded equipment, halved the subscription price, converted it into a weekly magazine, and boosted sales by introducing engaging interactive puzzles with prizes. Vasan followed a rigorous marketing strategy which eventually saw the emergence of Ananda Vikatan as the best selling Tamil magazine of the time. with a readership touching 30,000 within a few months and growing to hundreds of thousands of readers in the following decades. In 1933, he started a humour magazine in English called The Merry Magazine and in 1934, a Tamil weekly called Naradhar devoted to arts, politics, literature and social issues, both of which were successful. In 1934, Ananda Vikatan became the first Tamil magazine to advertise in the British periodicals Advertiser's Review and Advertiser's Weekly. A key to Vasan's success was his ability to find and nurture talent and one of the biggest breaks came in the early 1930s when Vasan found a new writer Kalki Krishnamurthy in whose writing he saw great potential. Kalki was living at the time with his family in Mayiladuthurai and Vasan without having met him in person unhesitatingly sent him money and tickets to move to Madras with his family and take up the role of the editor of his new magazine. Kalki and Vasan created history in the decade or so where they were professionally aligned and remained close friends for life. Another part of this successful team was Kalki Sadasivam who was a dynamic ad-man and was able to follow through Vasan's vision for marketing strategy. Sadasivam was also the legendary M.S. Subbulakshmi's husband. MS and Mrs Vasan were extremely close friends till the end of their days. Ananda Vikatan remained the foremost Tamil magazine without serious competition until 1941, when the editor Kalki Krishnamurthy and the dynamic marketing manager Kalki Sadasivam left the Ananda Vikatan to participate in the freedom struggle and hence got imprisoned. They then started the Kalki.
Ananda Vikatan, a part of the Vikatan group today continues to be one of the leading names in Tamil households and celebrates 97 years of publishing being the oldest vernacular magazine in the country. It now encompasses seven print magazines under its umbrella and has been the starting point of many major writers, artists and media personalities in South India.
Movies
In 1936, Vasan's Tamil novel Sathi Leelavathi was made into a film by Manorama Films. Two years later, he became a film distributor when he obtained the distribution rights for films made by the Madras United Artists' Association. He was the financier-distributor of the film Thyagabhoomi in 1939 that set new trends in various arenas. Thyagabhoomi was a serial novel written by Kalki in Ananda Vikatan while simultaneously being made as a film by noted film producer K Subrahmanyam who was also a close friend. Causing ripples and becoming a huge success, it was subsequently banned by the then British government for its strong theme of the Indian freedom movement in addition to other social issues. The film was a milestone in the annals of Tamil film history in many fronts.
When a fire broke out in 1940 in the premises of the Motion Picture Producers Combine, a prominent film studio owned by K Subrahmanyam, damaging it completely, Vasan purchased the studio, rebuilt and renamed it as the Gemini Studios. It is purported that the name was chosen because Vasan was an extremely successful punter, involved in horse racing at that time and owned a successful race horse named Gemini Star. However, his family cite the reason to choose "Gemini" as it was the natal moon sign of Vasan's wife Pattamal, who was not only his strongest supporter but who brought his family great luck. An interesting point of note was that the "model" for the Gemini twins logo was inspired on the day the name was coined when Vasan was visiting his friend K Subrahmanyam and his toddler son Balakrishnan ran out in his underwear and stood holding a bugle.
That very year, the Gemini Studios produced their first movie, Madanakamarajan, which was a box-office success. Vasan followed it with and Miss Malini both of which were successful. Miss Malini, based on the story Mr. Sampath by R. K. Narayan, launched the career of Gemini Ganesan, who later became a leading actor in the Tamil film industry. The Hindi version of this film was Mr Sampath in Hindi and, these films are the only adaptation of his novels that the famous writer R. K. Narayan was involved in the scripting of the screenplay. Mangamma Sabatham launched Vasundhara Devi, the mother of actor-politician Vyjayanthimala Bali as the lead and created a craze making her a huge star in just one film. The picture was directed by Acharya, one of the early brilliants of Tamil cinema. In 1942, Gemini also made Bala Nagamma, a silver jubilee hit in Telugu based on a popular folk tale which captured the imaginations of the audience and was hugely successful. It was the last film to star Kanchanamala and was an important film in the career of Pushpavalli. Bala Nagamma was later adapted into Hindi with Madhubala playin the lead and Savitri making her Hindi debut as Bahut Din Huwe with the addition of the climax borrowed from another Gemini Film, Avvaiyar which used elephants to the rescue. This was especially hugely successful in Maharashtra with their devotion to Lord Ganesha. Other successes during the period leading to independence included comedy capers like Kannama En Kadhali, Daasi Aparanji – a period social satire and , an adaptation of the story of the Corsican Brothers – a tale of co-joined twins separated at birth. It was one of the first films in India and one of the first few in the world that had a double role for the lead M. K. Radha who played both brothers. It also set the trend for innumerable successful films in India that had siblings, especially look-alike ones that were separated at birth and grew up in two different circumstances a la Prince and the Pauper or Man in the Iron Mask only to be switched or join forces to exact revenge. The actor-politician, M. G. Ramachandran picked this film to remake as "Neerum Neruppum" as a tribute and homage to Vasan in 1971 and earlier in 1968 had done his 100th film Oli Vilakku, particular that it be a Gemini production. Another successful film in this period, a devotional Nandanaar was a controversial story of a harijan man overcoming the shackles of the caste oppression to gain admittance into the Chidambaram Nataraja temple with divine sanction, hence becoming a Nayanmar shaivite saint. This starred the famous singer Dandapani Desikar with the film and soundtrack becoming a runaway superhit in Tamil Nadu. Technically, it was the first film in India that used playback singing in a portion where a divine song, a call to the saint in a heavenly voice rings out of the ether – this of course set a trend for playback singers and revolutionised the necessity to use singer-actors for films that had been the norm through the 1930s and early 1940s.