Legendary Telugu actress, Anjali Devi passed away on 13th January 2014 in Chennai. She is 86 years old. Anjali Devi was very famous for her roles in Telugu super hit films. Movies such as Lava Kusha, Suvarna Sundari, Anarkali have brought her stardom.
Anjali Devi is from Peddapuram in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. Her original name is Anjani Kumari. Director Pullaiah changed her name to Anjali Devi. Anjali is known as Telugu Sitamma after the success of Lava Kusha, in which she was portrayed as Sita, wife of Lord Rama.
Anjali Devi acted in more than 375 films in Telugu and Tamil languages. She got married to P. Adinarayana Rao, great music director, producer and also a lyricist. Anjali Devi won Filmfare Award several times. She received Raghupathi Venkaiah Award in 2005.
Famous Movies of Anjali; Devi: Balaraju, Keelu Gurram, Nirdoshi, Anarkali, Suvarna Sundari, Badi Panthulu, Rangula Ratnam, Tata Manavadu, Jeevana Tarangalu, Lava Kusha, Devata, Panduranga Mahatyam etc.
Departure of series of famous film actors in succession viz., AVS, Dharmavarapu Subrahmanyam, Sri Hari, Smt.Anjali Devi and latest ANR is frightening and depressing and has caused extreme distress to the people of South India and particularly to the citizens of Andhra Pradesh. It appears that the film actors in general are prone to intense physical, mental and emotional stress not known to public and that many actors who retired from acting are the silent sufferers due to economic and health problems. Therefore, it becomes essential that a corpus fund be created by an organization for the welfare of film artists and interest accrued thereof be spent for supporting film actors who attained the age of 65 years and above.