Deiva Cheyal

It tells the story of Major who runs a circus and is as close to the animal as he is to his own son played by Muthuraman. Fate plays havoc in form of Major’s creditors, his own daughter-in-law and through her, his son; thereby testing the relationship between himself and his animals. He moves out at one point in time with the animals. He rebuilds his life, again, with the help of his animals and comes up to regain the trust of his son and daughter-in-law. was produced by under , and directed by M. G. Balu. Thevar also wrote the story, while Ayyapillai wrote the dialogue. , and starred. All the animals in the film had been trained to respond to commands in ; since Sundarrajan could speak the language, this worked to his advantage. Animals used included elephants, lions and . The film’s animal trainer told Sundarrajan that the lion would stay calm if he kept scratching its mane, when he sat astride it, and Sundarrajan did accordingly. The music was composed by Diwakar, and the final cut measured 3,997 metres (13,114 ft). was released on 23 June 1967. said the animal actors performed better than the human actors. The film was not commercially successful, but Sundarrajan’s performance was praised. Although was not a commercial success, Thevar adapted it in Hindi as (1971), starring . This version, the script of which was tweaked by , emerged a major success, and was adapted in Tamil, again with some changes, as the starrer (1972), which was also a success. However, Thevar later opined that “the performance of both MGR and Rajesh Khanna was only 50%” of Sundarrajan’s.