Dwarakish

Early life

Dwarakish was born to Bungle Shama Rao and Jayamma in Hunsur on August 19, 1942. He grew up in Ittigegud, Mysore. He received his primary education in Sharada Vilas and Banumaiah's school, and he graduated from CPC Polytechnic with a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering. After completing his education, Dwarakish and his brother started an automotive spare parts business called "Bharath Auto Spares". You can still see this shop in Gandhi Square, Mysore. He was strongly attracted to acting and often asked his maternal uncle, a famous cinema director Hunusur Krishnamurthy, to give him a chance to act in movies. In 1963, he decided to quit business and start acting in movies.

Film career

In 1966, Dwarakish produced his first film Mamateya Bandhana. In 1969, he independently produced Mayor Muthanna, under the banner of "Dwaraka Films". Rajkumar and Bharathi played the lead roles in this movie. This movie was a great hit. After Mayor Muthanna, Dwarakish gave a series of box office successes to Kannada cinema, one after the other for the next two decades. He became the king of Kannada cinema producers.

Director

From the year 1985, Dwarakish started directing movies, his first movie as a director was Nee Bareda Kadambari. He went on to direct movies for other producers. Behind the camera, Dwarakish was very successful. As a director, he created movies such as Dance Raja Dance, Nee Bareda Kadambari, ""Shruthi", "Shruthi Haakidha Hejje", Rayaru Bandaru Mavana Manege and "KilaadigaLu"

Dwarakish Chitra faced problems after the failure of some movies. With huge losses from box office failures, Dwarakish was written off by his own colleagues and the entire film industry. On Udaya TV, he lamented that he had lost around 32 crores of rupees. Despite failures Dwarakish did not despair. He continued to make movies introducing new faces to Kannada cinema.

As a producer, he has brought many new people to the cinema. Not only actors and actresses—he has given opportunities to new directors and other technicians. They all consider him to be their "Godfather". The support of these people, and his unwavering dedication to cinema, gave Dwarakish his long-awaited moment of success. Dwarakish produced "ApthaMitra" in the year 2004. Apthamitra was a magnificent success. Dwarakish was the first producer to offer Rajanikanth an amount of 24 lakhs of rupees for a Tamil film in 1984. He has been instrumental in the careers of great actors like Vishnu Vardhan, Manjula, and Srinath.. With this success the 'King of Kannada Cinema Producers', Dwarakish, regained his throne in 2005.

Actor

As an actor, he was often typecast as a comedian. But some of his movies were comic action movies, also starring the actor Vishnuvardhan. He is popularly called 'Kulla' (meaning a short man) in Kannada. He was the first producer to shoot a Kannada film outside India. The film was Singapoorinalli Raja Kulla. It was a milestone in the history of Kannada cinema. He has in total produced 50 Kannada films and acted in more than 300 films. He has many firsts to his credit.

He was the first Kannada producer to bring Kishore Kumar to the Kannada film Industry and the song Aadu Aata Aadu became extremely popular.

Records and awards

Apthamitra created records in Kannada Cinema. It was the