FilmIndia (Feb-Dec 1949)

SUBSCRIPTION RATES The annual subscription, for 12 Issues of "filmlndia", from any month Is : INLAND FOREIGN: Rs. 24/. Shillings SO, Subscription Is accepted only for a collective period of 12 months and not for a smaller period. Subscription money should be remitted only by Money Order or by Postal Order but not by cheques. V. P. P.s will not be sent. filmindia PROPRIETORS FILMINDIA PUBLICATIONS LTD. S5. SIR RHIROZESH AH MEHTA ROAD, FORT. BOMB A V. Telephone ■ 26752 Editor: BAB U RAO PATEL Vol. XV. MARCH 1949 No. 3. ADVERTISEMENT RATES: The advertisement rates are as follows : Per Insertion Full Page Inside Rs. Half Page Inside Rs. t Page Inside Rs. * Page Inside Rs. 2nd & 3rd Cover Rs. 4th Cover Rs. 1st Cover Rs. 400 210 120 ISO 500 600 1,000 The cost of the advertisement should be submitted in advance with the order. The advertisement will be subject to the terms and conditions of our usual contract. I tforetnment Aiu5t Stop 'Tkii JQacket The latest Indian producer to go on a dollar pilgril3 to America to cash his celluloid junk is Uday nkar. the well-known Indian dancer. I Producer V. Shantaram began the vogue by taking i 'Shakuntala", both in person and celluloid, and so cVijoo Bhatt with his "Ram Rajya" and Mehboob |l his "Humayun". Shantaram's "Shakuntala" hardly ran three weeks I e Art Theatre, a small third rate down-town cinema i le 8th Street of New York with a capacity of 600 l, and Shantaram had to pay more dollars for the iicity of the picture than he collected at the boxI;. All the best pictures of the world are released in Idway or near about — between the 45th Street and eSOth Street. So Shantaram's "Shakuntala" travelled i1i the road exactly 37 streets for its New York "preIje". To describe the location and the importance of tArt Theatre in New York in parallel terms we must ll'l to Kamatipura in Bombay and pick upon the Alexla Cinema as the nearest possible description of the rjTheatre. ■ Almost all the leading New York film critics slashed M.kuntala" and described it as a very poor and ama|sh picture, both technically and emotionally. Even tbetite Jayashree got a few hard knocks from the cri • Yet in India ignorant newspaper boys were beguiled ■publishing high-sounding publicity blurbs about the ique New York premiere of the first Indian film" and I York cablegrams were published in support of these Iticity blurbs. These cablegrams were, of course, sent jlayer and Burstyn. a firm distributing foreign pic0 at 113 West 42nd Street, to whom Shantaram gave Pictures for distribution when he could not find any j(to buy them. In fact Shantaram was so much peeved and disgustith his American trip, probably because the Amerir?arth did not sink in submission under his feet, that Ed not have the heart to go even to Hollywood but ined home directly from New York. In America they didn't know whether Shantaram 4the name of a cabbage or a cucumber, and they did l:are. And that must have hurt the great Shantaram is used to being interviewed by half-starved news boys in India and taking intellectual poses in press photographs. r On return home Shantaram did not say much about the actual reception he got but talked of floating a distribution concern with a crore of rupees as capital in association with the Americans. The poor Indian newsboys, complete strangers to the gold dollars and ill-acquamted with even the rupee notes, swallowed this "crorepill and outdid one another in boosting Shantaram's mysterious "international link-up" and Shantaram gave more intellectual poses for press photographs. Nothing, however, has yet come out of these bic publicity stunts except an additional self-hvpnotism of Shantaram as an international film magnate. Even that picture "Dr. Kotnis" which was produced in English specially for the international market is still rotting in tins unreleased even in India though it is three years now that the picture has been ready. And the Government of India, who had also overrated this man— being hypnotised by his newspaper publicity, had sanctioned as much as 60.000 dollars for hi* American expenses and allowed so much Indian monev to go out of a poor country. Shantaram. of course, bought a big Packard car for his charming wife and the rest^of the dollars vanished in expensive American hotels and tips. Producer Vijay Bhatt. another publicity product, also seemed to have seen the glimpse of a gold dollar somewhere and grabbing the tins of his "Ram Rajya" tickled the Government to give him some dollars and within a week he was on the other side of the Atlantic showing his stupid picture to small invited audiences and squeezing certificates of merit with the help of Hari C. Govil. a disillusioned Indian in America. No one in America was interested in "Ram Rajya" as a commercial proposition and Vijay Bhatt returned to India with a courtesy certificate from Director Cecil B. De Mille. Once again the Indian newsboys, tea-thirsty and crumb-conscious, vied with one another and made much of that certificate and ended by giving De Mille more publicity within a month than he had during a life-time. And India lost several thousand dollars more. It was now time for another to jump off the board, bo M. A. Fazalbhoy. our shrewd machinery salesman injected Producer Mehboob with enthusiasm and another caravan started on a pilgrimage to the dollar land. Meh 3