The Bombay Talkies story is full of magic and color. By 1932, Himanshu Rai was back in India after having been
exposed to filmmaking in Europe. His ambition was to bring this new cultural
phenomena to the Indian people. This must have been harder than you think,
because Himanshu Rai struggled to get this idea off the ground, primarily
because of the money involved. He was meeting many people and trying to
convince them about the magic of cinema but the effort was proving
unsuccessful. He had the complete support of people such as F.E Dinshaw, Sir
Feroze Sethna among others but they could not help him when it came to the
crucial aspect of financing.
In the 30's, the movie business was supposed to
be a 'dirty business'. People would talk about movies,
but many wouldn't even consider going to watch one. This would be similar to
people talking about gold prices but seldom buying it. Even though movies did
make people curious, its reputation as a professional field was bad. There
seemed to be a lack of respect for the profession because it was be considered
the domain of undesirable sections of the then Indian society. Due to this lack
of respect and understanding for the profession, financiers during those times
would face an impossible challenge when it came to getting returns on their
investment.
It was during this
hunt for financiers that Himanshu
Rai came
in contact with Shri. Abhimanyu Prasad Singh, a close friend of Seth Badriprasad Dube, who was a well known financier.
Seth Badriprasad refused to finance Himanshu Rai due to the dirty background of
the profession. Shri. Abhimanyu spoke next to Seth Badri Prasad's son Shri.
Rajnarayan Dube. He
was a young and dynamic businessman who operated a successful company called Dube Industries, which he had
founded in 1929. Shri. Dube was born on 10th October 1910 at Kalighat in
Kolkata was
an ardent devotee of Maa Kali. He was influenced by the power of art and
creativity at a young age. Both men met at the Taj Mumbai Hotel in Colaba and
discussed an initial
investment amount of Rs.25 lakh. However, Himanshu Rai couldn't not convince Rajnarayan
Dube to invest the amount because of the dismal returns on investment that the
Indian movie industry offered. At this point, it would seem that Bombay Talkies
would never come to be, but things have a way of working out in unexpected
ways.
A few months passed by
and Himanshu Rai had grown increasingly despondent because it was becoming
impossible to raise investment for his movie company. In his depression, the
man attempted suicide but was unsuccessful. Shri. Rajnarayan Dube got wind of this through Shri
Abhimanyu Prasad Singh and wondered about this man, one who so completely and
wholeheartedly believed in the power of cinema and talking pictures that he did
not see it fit to continue living if he couldn't follow his dreams. Rajnarayan Dube decided that Himanshu
Rai was onto something here and finalized the investment with him soon after. In doing this, Shri. Rajnarayan Dube went deliberately against the advice
of his father, Seth Badriprasad Dube, who felt that this would not be a good
investment choice. In doing this, Shri. Rajnarayan Dube gave birth to the
Indian Film Industry, which has now gone on to become a huge cultural and
financial force in the country.
On 22nd June, 1934, Bombay Talkies
began operations. The movie company
was named byShri. Dube's mother, Shrimati Gayatri Devi. Though Light of Asia was a concept
which Himanshu Rai built during his days in Europe, the first film to come out
of the stables was Karma, which launched the same year. It was followed by
Jawani ki Hawa, Achhut Kanya and Jeevan Naiya . The movie company operated
along a principle of keeping the creative aspects and business aspects
separate. Shri. Rajnarayan Dube would look into the business end of things and
both Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani would immerse themselves in the creative
pursuit. This approach gave rise to some of the most technically impressive
films seen this side of the planet. The technical prowess was due to the movie
studio employing German and other European technicians, prominent among them
being Franz Osten.
Bombay Talkies was
single handedly responsible of making the careers of some of the leading talent
in the golden age of Indian cinema. Besides Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani, the
company gave the world Ashok Kumar, Leela Chitnis, Madhubala (who began as a
child artist and was given her stage name by Rajnarayan Dube himself), Dilip
Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Mehmood, Kishore Kumar, Kamal Amrohi, Hrishikesh Mukherjee,
Sashadhar Mukherjee, Lata Mangeshkar, Satyajit Ray, Amiya Chakravarti, SD
Burman, Manna Dey, Saraswati Devi (who was the first woman music director in
Asia) and many more. All in all, Bombay Talkies gave the world 280 of the most
talented movie professionals in the last century.
While Himanshu Rai's original vision for a
movie production house sowed
the seeds for the formation of Indian cinema as an industry, Shri. Rajnarayan Dube single-handedly architected the
business angle of the entire industry which was yet to come. He supported
various new theatres such as BN Sircar's New Theatres in Calcutta, V
Shantaram's Prabhat Pictures, Homi Wadia's Wadia Movietone, Sohrab Modi's Minerva
Movietone, LV Prasad's Prasad Labs and Pictures ( Prasad was an ex-technician
from Bombay Talkies), SM Vasan's Gemini Pictures and Mehboob Khan's theatres.
Shri. Dube financed these fledgling companies and made them stronger. In
essence, he build the entire movie ecosystem in the country. Everyone whom
Shri. Dube supported went to on build a name for themselves in the industry.
Shri. Rajnarayan Dube had a big vision for Indian Cinema.
He wanted Indian filmmaking to be a respectable profession. He thus stipulated
that Bombay Talkies would only hire graduates. He hoped
this move would legitimize the Indian film industry of the thirties and
forties, and it certainly did. Besides this,Shri. Dube also wanted the Indian
film industry to be inclusive of Indians from all states and sectors of life.
Even though the movie company worked with European technicians, Shri. Dube
would bring on Indian technicians and make sure that they learnt the art of
moviemaking. He also brought a lot of Indian writers onboard so that movies
could have an Indian cultural sensitivity and thus could appeal to a large
amount of people. This move gave rise to a whole new Indian profession, movie
making! This seemed to be a good move in the light of circumstances that were
yet to arrive.
During one scene in
the movie Karma, there was a minute long kissing scene between Himanshu Rai and
Devika Rani onscreen. This caused quite a stir in Indian society then. Shri. Rajnarayan Dubewas furious about him not being
informed about this scene. Himanshu Rai, reportedly ‘held his ears' and said
that it would not happen again. Shri. Dube, however, resolved to screen all
films by himself before they could be released. He was a Brahman and a
conservative and strictly discouraged smoking, drinking and other vices in the
studio premises. He was also a very caring employer for those pioneering people
who worked at Bombay
Talkies. He made sure that
Education, Rent, Food and other daily necessities were provided free of cost to
employees of Bombay Talkies. He also championed the rights of of the movie
industry by setting up Unions and Associations such as IMPA (of which Bombay
Talkies was the first member). He also helped grow the regional film industry.
He staunchly supported Marathi, Hindi, Bengali and Southern cinema. If it
wasn't for Shri. Dube, the Indian movie industry would have resembled other
Southeast Asian movie industries from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Bollywood today is big enough to compete with Hollywood movies.
During the second
world war, Bombay Talkies was struggling. The war had made things very
difficult in many ways. The company had several movies on the floor but they
could not get them finished because the crucial German technicians had been
arrested and detained by the British Government. At this point, 15-20 films
were on the production floor and were stalled pretty badly. Himanshu Rai
suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of this and passed away in 1940.
Bombay Talkies had just lost its crucial founder on whose vision the entire company
stood to be successful. Shri.Rajnarayan Dube decided that Rai's vision for
Indian cinema would continue and he again invested four lakh ten thousand
rupees into the venture. This injected some much needed blood into the company
and a new era of Indian film making began. Shri. Dube decided that from that
moment on, Bombay
Talkies would only hire Indian technicians and production professionals.
In this second phase,
the company boomed and went on to a very productive cinematic run. The 1943 hit Kismet was getting rave reviews everywhere
and managed to run in theatres for 3 and a half years in 90% of the Indian
theatres and collected Rs.63crores. By comparing the value of gold and land by
today's standards, the movie made the equivalent of Rs.34000 crores. Not one
movie has broken this record in terms of business. By 1954, Bombay Talkies had put its name to a huge amount of
work. It had produced 102 films, had
introduced 280 new talents, built
400 theatres across the country and had financed more than 700 films. At this
time Shri. Rajnarayan Dube decided that he and his company had
arrived at the goal that they had set out to complete two decades earlier.
Indian films were now a major force in terms of communication and entertainment
in post-independence India. Shri.
Dube shut down Bombay Talkies in 1954 so that he could pay more attention to other aspects of
his business.