Former filmstar Gemini Ganesan dies after a prolonged illness

Gemini Ganesan, Tamil cinema's romantic hero of yesteryears and father of Bollywood diva Rekha, died early yesterday after a prolonged illness.

He was 85, and is survived by seven daughters and a son. He had been suffering from a kidney ailment for the past few months and the end came at the residence of one of his daughters Dr Kamala Selvaraj, a leading gynaecologist.

Born in 1920 as Ramaswamy Ganesan, he was given the screen name Gemini Ganesan.

Popularly known as Kadhal Mannan (King of Romance), he lived up to that sobriquet both on screen and off it. Despite Indian laws prohibiting polygamy, he married four times, including his one-time on screen leading lady Savithri, a star of her times, known for her melodramatic roles.

Known for his romantic roles, he was equally versatile in tear jerking melodramas, comedies and mythologicals and had acted in more than 300 films in all southern Indian languages, in a career spanning more than six decades.

Though he played lead roles till the late 1970s, he returned to the film world in the mid 1990s after a more than 15-year break in character roles in films such as the Kamal Hassan starrer Avvai Shanmughi, in which he played the role of an old man lusting after his grandchildren's nanny.

Unlike Sivaji and MGR, Gemini was a late entrant to the film world. He had worked as a laboratory demonstrator in Madras Christian College, from where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in science with a chemistry major. But given his handsome looks, he was bitten by the movie bug and gave up the college job to join Gemini Studios as a casting assistant in 1945.

It however took him some more years before he appeared on the screen in a small role in Miss Malini in 1953, followed by a couple of other movies produced by Gemini Studios. It was not until the next year that he got the lead role in Manampol Mangalyam. Among his more memorable films are Missiamma, Vanjikottai Valiban, Pasamalar, Meenda sorgam, Kalyana Parisu and Irukodugal.

Following his traditional Tamil Brahmin background, Ganesan married Babji in 1939 and three years later fathered his first child.

Seven years later, he married actress Pushpavalli and the girl born out of this marriage went on to become the Bollywood icon Rekha. In 1954 he secretly married yet another leading lady Savithri.

His last marriage was at the age of 78, when he married a Bangalore girl, more than 50 years his junior, which ended in a messy separation.