Cinematography was handled by T. Muthuswamy, editing by S. Surya, and art direction by H. Shantaram. S. P. Muthuraman worked as an assistant director, this being his first stint with film. Casting Gemini Ganesan, his last name credited as Ganesh, was cast as Rajalingam and Savitri Ganesh as the title character Kannamma. The former was paid a salary of . Daisy Irani was originally chosen to play Rajalingam and Kannamma's son Selvam, after AVM were impressed with her performance in Yaar Paiyyan (1957). Sara Ramachandran, the family doctor of AVM, came to the AVM household with four-year old Kamal Haasan. Sara told Rajeswari that Haasan had come to meet Meiyappan as he aspired to become an actor; Haasan was eventually taken by Saravanan to Meiyappan, who asked him to act like Irani. Impressed with Haasan's performance in the audition, Meiyappan decided to replace Irani with him. Though Saravanan protested as Irani had already been already booked for the role and paid an advance of , Meiyappan remained adamant as he felt Haasan was fresher and brighter than Irani. Devika, who portrayed Maduram, received a salary of . Filming The song "Kangalil Vaarthaigal Puriyatho" was shot with many mango trees in the background. When it was decided to reshoot parts of the song, the mangoes were no longer in the trees since the season had ended. Hence, it was decided to reshoot the necessary scenes with fake mangoes hanging from the trees. The first shot filmed on Haasan was a scene featuring Kannamma feeding him upma. The song "Ammavum Neeye Appavum Neeye", picturised on Selvam, was recorded with three minutes duration, but Prakash Rao filmed its video to be only one-and-a-half minutes long. Meiyappan insisted to shoot the entire song so that Selvam could be established, and reshoot other scenes he was not satisfied with. Prakash Rao felt Meiyappan was interfering creatively and expressed his desire to quit the film, although up to nearly had been canned. Though Meiyappan was hesitant, Prakash Rao convinced him and left. AVM later hired A. Bhimsingh, under whose direction the film was completed. Although Bhimsingh offered to retain Prakash Rao's name in the credits, he declined. When Saravanan found another company made a film Kadavulin Kuzhandhai on the same plot as Kalathur Kannamma, he decided to release Kalathur Kannamma as soon as possible. However Meiyappan wanted to reshoot certain scenes which Saravanan was not interested