Uthama Puthiran was adapted from the 1939 Hollywood film The Man in the Iron Mask, which was based on the 1847–1850 novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later by the French adventure fiction maestro, Alexandre Dumas.[1] The film was produced and directed by the Salem based movie mogul, T. R. Sundaram, it proved successful and established the singing star of the 1940s, P. U. Chinnappa. The film featured him in dual roles and thus made him a first Tamil actor to feature him double roles. The double action scenes of Chinnappa was shot by Bodo Gutschwager, a German technician.[3] There was a sequence of the twins engaged in a duel while singing a duet, throwing challenges making it one of the rare scenes in Indian cinema.[4]
M. V. Rajamma, Kannada theatre and film actress, played the heroine.[5] Uthama Puthran was her second film with Chinnappa, the first being Yayathi (1938).[4]T. S. Balaiah portrayed the negative role. The film had supporting cast featuring NSK, Mathuram, Kali N. Ratnam, and P. A. Periyanayaki.[4]
The music was composed by G. Ramanathan[2] and the lyrics were penned by S. Velsamy.[6] Even though the British Indian government banned the Tamil rebel poet Bharati's work, Sundaram had the actor render the famous song "Senthamizh Naadenum Podhiniley" and got away with it.[4][3][7]
