Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Madan Theatres

Timestamp:

Jun 25, 2012, 4:50:21 PM (12 years ago)

Author:

Trupti

Comment:

--

Madan Theatres

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+'''Madan Theatres'''
+
+Giant distribution corporation and studio
+which dominated India’s silent cinema. Built by
+Jamshedji Framji Madan (1856-1923) into one
+of the country’s premier Parsee theatre
+companies. J.F. Madan came from a middleclass
+Bombay Parsee family of theatre
+enthusiasts: his brother Khurshedji was a
+partner in the Original Victoria Theatrical Club
+while Jamshedji and another brother, Pestonji,
+started as actors. Jamshedji acted in
+Nusserwanji Parekh’s Sulemani Shamsher
+(1873, produced by Elphinstone), while
+Pestonjee played lead roles in two famous
+plays, Eduljee Khori’s Gul-e-Bakavali and
+Jehangir, staged by Dadabhai Thunthi. In the
+1890s, J.F. Madan bought two prominent
+theatre companies, the Elphinstone and the
+Khatau-Alfred, including their creative staff and
+the rights to their repertoire. Shifted his base to
+Calcutta in 1902, establishing J.F. Madan & Sons
+(maintaining his other interests like
+pharmaceuticals). By 1919, J.F. Madan & Sons
+had become the joint stock company Madan
+Theatres, running the Elphinstone Theatrical
+Co. (expanding from the Elphinstone Picture
+Palace and the ancestor of the Elphinstone
+Bioscope) and its flagship organisation, the
+Corinthian Theatre. They employed several of
+the leading Urdu-Hindi playwrights
+(Kashmiri, Betaab) and stars (Patience
+Cooper, Seeta Devi). Some historians claim
+that J.F. Madan started showing films in a tent
+bioscope in 1902 on the Calcutta maidan, but it
+is more likely that the Madans did not seriously
+get into film until 1905, financing some of
+Jyotish Sarkar’s documentaries (e.g. Great
+Bengal Partition Movement, 1905) which they
+presented at the Elphinstone. In 1907 the
+Elphinstone followed the Minerva and Star
+theatres (see Hiralal Sen) and went into
+exhibition and distribution, winning the agency
+rights for Pathé, who also represented First
+National. They expanded by buying or leasing
+theatres located in urban areas with European
+residents, commanding higher ticket prices and
+catering to the British armed forces before and
+during WW1. On J.F. Madan’s death, the third
+of his five sons, Jeejeebhoy Jamshedji Madan,
+took over and expanded the empire,
+continuing to direct some of the company’s
+films. By 1927 the Madan distribution chain
+controlled c.1/2 of India’s permanent cinemas.
+At their peak they owned 172 theatres and
+earned half the national box office. Up to WW1
+they showed mainly British films supplied by
+the Rangoon-based London Film, but after the
+war they imported Metro and United Artists
+product, mostly bought ‘blind’ with rights for
+the entire subcontinent. Many of these they
+appear to have distributed as their own
+productions, e.g. Wages of Sin (1924) and
+Flame of Love (1926), which Virchand
+Dharamsey’s recent filmography of silent
+cinema (Light of Asia, 1994) identifies as
+imports, contrary to the claims made in their
+initial advertising. By the mid-20s they were the
+first of the five major importers of Hollywood
+films, followed by Pathé, Universal, Globe and
+Pancholi’s Empire distributors. In the silent
+era, their exhibition and distribution were more
+important than their production work, mainly
+making shorts for export until Satyavadi Raja
+Harishchandra (1917) and Dotiwala’s
+Bilwamangal (1919; the first Bengali feature)
+both proved successful. Their early features
+were mainly filmed plays, converting their
+playwrights into scenarists and their actors into
+stars. Many were directed by C. Legrand,
+formerly a Pathé man, and later by Jyotish
+Bannerjee. Claimed to have done
+international co-productions, although Savitri
+(1923) made by Giorgio Mannini for Cines in
+Rome and starring Rina De Liguoro opposite
+Angelo Ferrari, probably was not co-produced
+but only released by Madan. However, he did
+work with the Italian cineaste E.D. Liguoro and
+cameraman T. Marconi. In the early 20s, the
+Madans also acquired the rights to the major
+19th C. Bengali novelist Bankimchandra
+Chattopadhyay’s writings, forming the basis of
+their ‘literary film’ genre which came to
+dominate Bengali cinema for several decades.
+By the end of the silent era the group had
+become too large for its managerial structure. It
+invested heavily into sound after it premiered
+Universal’s Melody of Love at the Elphinstone
+Bioscope (1928) and made the expensive
+Shirin Farhad (1931, narrowly beaten by
+Alam Ara as India’s first sound film), Amar
+Choudhury’s Jamai Sasthi (1931, the first
+Bengali sound feature) and Indrasabha
+(1932). Their closure in the late 30s is usually
+blamed on a failed deal with Columbia but this
+may only have put the final seal on a decline
+caused by crippling sound conversion costs,
+the stabilisation of film imports and the spread
+of the more efficient managing-agency system
+able to attract more speculative financing.
+
+[[Studio]]