SANDALWOOD.

The Kannada Film Industry is called as "Sandalwood", because of the availability of Sandalwood in Karnataka.   

The fraternity of Sandalwood began giving respect to Rajkumar, by calling him as, "Annavru", meaning "Elder brother" and latter on the entire people of Karnataka accepted him as ANNAVRU. His entry to cinema in the year 1952 was a boon to Kannada language, Kannadigas and the film industry. 

He was the uncrowned King of Cinema. Many of his films were dubbed and remade into many other Indian languages. The popular actors of other languages, who acted in those remake films have said that, they could not reach the performance of Rajkumar in their films.  

Though the market of Kannada Film Industry is very small, which is limited only to Karnataka State & at the time, when there was no Internet media as we have today, he was well known in India and many parts of the World.