Kumari (actress)

Nagaraja Kumari Maddela (1921 – 3 March 2008), better known as Kumari, was a renowned Indian actress, playback singer, musician, beauty queen, and a model. She was the first Indian actress to play dual-roles in film. She pioneered the art of playing multiple roles in a single film. She was also one of the first Indian faces used by Lux (soap), a brand that pioneered female celebrity endorsement, and have since used famous faces such as Aishwarya Rai.[1][2]

Kumari
Born
Nagaraja Kumari Maddela

1921
Tenali, India
Died3 March 2008
Vijayawada, India
OccupationActress, Singer
Years active1936–1954

She was born in Tenali in 1921. She wanted to be an actress since she was a child but her parents did not approve of her aspirations. Her relative Anjaiah Puvvala became her agent and booked her for acting in Dasavataram in 1936. This was her debut film, where she played three roles as Lakshmi, Seetha and Yashodhara. In 1939, she played the heroine in her second film Amma directed by Niranjan Pal. She portrayed the role of Chitralekha in Usha in the same year. She then booked for three films with Vauhini Studios. Her major breakthrough film was Sumangali in 1940, and since then she was known as Kumari. She played as an innocent housemaid in Devatha in 1941. She competed with Chittor V. Nagaiah and Tanguturi Suryakumari and earned a great repertoire. She played with K. S. Prakash Rao in Tulasidas. She was one of the very few actress of that time that voiced her own songs. After a five-year hiatus, she acted in the successful film Mugguru Maratilu in 1946. She acted played another dual role very well in Maayapilla in 1951 where she played Asha and Roopa. She subsequently acted in the classic film Malliswari (1951) as Maharani, Akasharaju (1951), based on the story by Vishwanatha Satyanarayana, Pempudu Koduku (1953) and Sri Kalahastiswara Mahatyam (1954).

Kumari moved to Vijayawada in 1958. She died on 3 March 2008 at the age of 87 years.

Filmography
YearFilmCharacter(s)Notes
1936DasavataramLakshmi, Seetha and YashodharaDebut film
1939AmmaDirected by Niranjan Pal
1939UshaChitralekha
1940Sumangali
1941Devatha
TulasidasWith K. S. Prakash Rao
1946Mugguru Maratilu
1951MaayapillaAsha and RoopaDual role
1951MalliswariMaharani
1951AkasharajuBased on the story by Vishwanatha Satyanarayana
1953Pempudu Koduku
1954Sri Kalahastiswara Mahatyam
gollark: If you accept this then any action which reduces future human population in some way is "culling", which is stupid.
gollark: This is another maybe technically accurate (at an even greater stretch) but ridiculous interpretation. If people don't exist, it is not in fact possible to remove them.
gollark: This sort of thing makes natural languages quite annoying, but you can help by, well, not picking the most emotionally charged word which "technically matches".
gollark: If I say "that person is a criminal" you might very well have a worsened opinion of them, even if I know that all they actually did was jaywalking or something. It's technically not *false* to call them that but misleads.
gollark: Using a word which is technically right by a dictionary definition can be misleading because it has connotations which possible alternate choices of word don't.

References
  1. Maayapilla article published in Navya magazine.
  2. Nagaraja Kumari in Navya magazine.
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