Bombay Talkies was a movie studio founded in 1934.

During its period of operation the Bombay

Talkies produced 40 movies in Malad, a suburb of the Indian city of Bombay (now known
as Mumbai).
The Studio was established in 1934 by Himanshu Rai and the Devika Rani. After Rai's death in
1940, Rani took over the Studio. Besides the founders, Ashok Kumar was the leading actor of the
Studio until 1943, when he founded another studio Filmistan with Shashadhar Mukherjee. After
Rani's retirement, Kumar and Mukherjee took over Bombay Talkies. The last film produced by the
Studio was released in June 1954

For the period in cinematic history it represented, the Bombay Talkies was considered to be
an innovative and highly resourced movie studio. In line with international standards, the
studios' facilities included sound and echo-proof stages, laboratories, editing rooms and
a preview theater. The reputation of the Bombay Talkies was further enhanced by
employing experienced European technicians, the most prominent of whom was Franz
Osten.
The Bombay Talkies set a high technical standard for film making in India and was credited
with introducing a level of professionalism to the medium of movie making and acting,
reputedly higher than standards set by rival Indian film production companies. Bombay
Talkies acquired a reputation for changing the aesthetic and technology traditionally
associated with Indian films. It was also renowned for producing films on (then)
controversial topics such as those dealing with love between an untouchablelower caste girl
and a high caste Hindu Brahmin boy (Achhut Kanya).
Devika Rani, who became one of Bombay Talkies' most successful actresses, and India's
first film diva, appeared in Jawani ki Hawa (1935) and Jeevan Naiya (1936), as well as a
number of other highly successful productions by the company. The studio was similarly
recognized as having launched the careers of several prominent Indian film industry
luminaries including Devika Rani, Ashok Kumar, Leela Chitnis, Mehmood
Ali, Madhubala and Dilip Kumar. Madhubala and Dilip Kumar, who co-starred in four
Bombay Talkies films, engaged in a long term, highly covert love affair.[3] Raj Kapoor worked
as an assistant to Amiya Chakravarty of Bombay Talkies, before becoming a famous
director.[4]

Success[edit]
Following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the company faced a number of problems.
The most significant change for the studio involved Himanshu Rai, the studio's founder,
suffering a nervous breakdown which ultimately resulted in his demise. Following the shock
caused by his demise, control of the film company passed on to Devika Rani who was
appointed as the key producer of the Bombay Talkies studios. Despite, or perhaps because
of, her prior experience as an actress, Devika Rani was highly successful in sustaining the
production values of the company, and the studio subsequently retained its dominance over
the rapidly expanding Indian film industry. The most successful Bombay Talkies films
produced during this period included Kangan and Bandhan, both of which featured Leela
Chitnis and Ashok Kumar. In 1943, Kismet created a local record for the longest continual

showing of the same film. The movie continued to run for more than three and half years at
the Roxy movie theater in Calcutta, India.[citation needed]

Timeline[edit]

1934: The Bombay Talkies film company is conceived and established.

1935: Jawani ki Hawa, a thriller starring Devika Rani is released.

1936: Jeevan Naiya and Achhut Kanya are released to wide acclaim.

1940: Himanshu Rai, a key founder of the Bombay Talkies passes away.

1942: The actress Madhubala makes her debut as a child artist named Baby
Mumtaz in the movie Basant.

1943: Kismet, a successful thriller, is released.

1944: Dilip Kumar's first movie Jwar Bhata is released.

1948: Ziddi, featuring Dev Anand is released, transforming the previously unknown
actor into a well known celebrity.

1949: Mahal, becomes a hit film.

1954: The Bombay Talkies company is closed down.

1994: Devika Rani, a highly respected actress and former head of production for the
Bombay Talkies studios dies in Bangalore on 9 March 1994.

2001: Ashok Kumar, who appeared in a number of Bombay Talkies productions dies
on 10 December 2001.
http://scroll.in/article/692493/how-the-bombay-talkies-studio-became-hindicinemas-original-dream-factory

How the Bombay Talkies

studio became Hindi
cinema's original dream
factory
Its productions were the forerunners of the escapist cinema
that would come to dominate the Indian screen.

Image credit: Film Heritage Foundation

Bombay Talkies, producer of such hits as Achhut
Kannya (1936), Kismet(1943) and Ziddi (1948), was founded
in 1934, one year after actors and filmmakers Himanshu Rai
and Devika Rani arrived in Mumbai from London with the
dream of building a world-class film studio. The two had met
in the UK, where Rai asked Rani to design the sets for Light of
Asia (1925), his ambitious film on the life of Gautam Buddha.
They had subsequently gotten married.

Rai and Rani brought with them a bilingual romance drama

set among royals. The English version, Fate aka Song of
Serpent, had premiered in London in May 1933, and while the
film drew mixed notices, critics were unanimous in their
praise for Rani, the leading lady. The News Chronicledeclared,
She totally eclipses the ordinary film star. Rai and Rani also
brought a Hindi version of the film Karma aka Nagan ki
Ragini, which opened in Mumbai on January 27, 1934.
The same year, Bombay Talkies was formed and a studio was
built in Malad, on the outskirts of Mumbai. In its quest to set
up the most modern film studio in India, Bombay Talkies
purchased state-of-the-art equipment from Germany and
recruited German and British talent, such as cinematographer
Josef Wirsching, art director Karl von Spretti and director
Franz Osten.

By 1935, starting with the murder mystery Jawani ki Hawa,

Bombay Talkies regularly began producing Hindi films with
Devika Rani as its main star. The self-sufficient studio had a
board of directors, issued shares to the public, declared
dividends and bonuses, and was listed on the stock
exchange. In addition, Rai and Rani even started a trainee
programme. Each year, Rai interviewed scores of candidates
from leading universities and assigned employees to a
variety of tasks in all departments of filmmaking.

At Bombay Talkies, Devika Rani formed a hugely successful

pairing with Ashok Kumar which, ironically, was the result of
her affair and subsequent elopement with Najam-ul-Hussain,
her co-star from Jawani ki Hawa. Rai traced the couple to
Kolkata and coaxed Rani into returning. As was to be
expected, he sacked Hussain. In his place, Rai chose his
laboratory assistant, Ashok Kumar, as the studios new face.
Rani and Kumar appeared together in several films, starting
with Jeevan Naiya (1936), in which Kumar plays a rich man
who disowns Rani after he finds out that she is the daughter
of a lowly dancer. Of all their films,Achhut
Kannya (1936) is the best-known. The tragic love story
between a low-caste girl and a Brahmin boy was a critical and
commercial success. The song Main Ban ki Chidiya, sung by
Rani and Kumar, is still remembered. The music was
composed by Khorshed Minocher-Homji, a Parsi woman who
went by the name Saraswati Devi and who was Indias first
female music director.

Bombay Talkies productions were the forerunners of the

escapist cinema that would come to dominate the Indian
screen. Its movies sugar-coated social issues and realities,
were of high technical standards, and closely resembled the
glossy movies being made by Hollywoods MGM studio. Rani
was lit up like Greta Garbo, MGMs biggest female star of the
time, especially in her close-ups.
Landmark Bombay Talkies films include the

mythological Savitri (1937), the Leela Chitnis and

Ashok Kumar socials Kangan (1939), Bandhan (1940)
and Jhoola (1941), and Basant (1942), the marital drama with
the theatre world as a backdrop.

Kismet (1943), directed by Gyan Mukherjee, was arguably

Bombay Talkies biggest success. It ran for over three years
at the Roxy cinema in Kolkata. The film was a trendsetter in
that its main character, played by Ashok Kumar, was a thief
and an anti-hero. Kismet also was an early example of the
much used and abused lost-and-found formula, as per which
the hero is separated from his parents in childhood and
reunited with them in the end.
Coming at the height of the Indian freedom movement, the
film cleverly included the patriotic song Door Hato Ae
Duniyawalon, Hindustan Hamara Hai which asked its listeners
not to bow to Germany or Japan, Britains enemies in World
War II.

Despite Kismets success, Bombay Talkies was by then in

deep trouble. When WWII broke out in 1939, the British
government interned the studios German technicians,
crippling operations. An overworked Rai had a nervous
breakdown and died in 1940. Even as Indian technicians took
over from the departed foreigners, a power struggle followed
between Rani and a rebel group led by Ashok Kumar, Gyan
Mukherjee and S Mukherji, who formed a new company,
Filmistan, in 1943.
After Rani left the movies in 1945, Ashok Kumar and many
others returned to their alma mater in 1947. But the studio
was unable to clear its debts despite the success of such
films as Majboor (1948), Ziddi (1948), which gave Dev Anand

his first big hit and Kishore Kumar his first playback singing
chance, and the suspense thriller Mahal (1949).
Though the studio continued making films, Bombay Talkies
died a lingering death in the fifties. Its final productions were
Bimal Roys Maa(1952), with the studios one-time heroine
Leela Chitnis playing the title role, the Ashok Kumar-Dev
Anand-Meena Kumari starrer Tamasha (1952) and the Ashok
Kumar-P Bhanumathi vehicle Shamsheer (1953). Even a lastditch effort, the multi-starrer Baadbaan (1954), made by the
Bombay Talkies Workers Industrial Co-operative Society,
could not save the studio from shutting down.

A small and desolate patch of ruins in the Mumbai suburb of

Malad is all that remains of the legendary studio.

RELATED

The story of how Prabhat Studios made India's biggest

hits of the 1930s
Set up by five partners, the production banner made some of early Indian
cinema's films, including 'Sant Tukaram'.

Image credit: Film Heritage Foundation

From the late 1920s to the mid-1950s, Indian movie studios

proved the impossible: that social commitment, artistic
creativity and commercial viability could coexist.
This was a time when large filmmaking companies controlled
every department of the process, including the theatres that
screened the movies. The Indian studios functioned in a
manner similar to Hollywood: the bosses ran the show, while
actors were retained on a payroll. Besides honing the talents
of early stars (KL Saigal, Devika Rani, Ashok Kumar) and
filmmakers (Debaki Bose, V Shantaram, Bimal Roy), the
studios served as launch pads for the careers of such actors
and directors as Dev Anand and Guru Dutt. One such
formidable studio where Anand and Dutt kick-started their
careers was the Prabhat Film Company.

Photo credit: Film Heritage Foundation

Prabhat was launched in 1929 in Kolhapur by VG Damle, S
Fathelal, KR Dhaiber, SB Kulkarni and V Shantaram. The
studio was later relocated to Pune. Starting with silent films,
Prabhat entered the sound era in 1932 and made films in
Marathi and Hindi. Though their productions explored mostly
mythological and devotional subjects, the studio also looked
at hard-hitting social themes. A common thread binding

diverse titles was the production quality. Their art

department, which had a reputation for set construction and
the use of plaster and draperies, was regarded as the finest
in the country. Films like Ayodhyache Raja/Ayodhya ka
Raja(Marathi/Hindi 1932) on the truth-loving King
Harishchandra, Amrit Manthan (1934) with human and animal
sacrifices as a backdrop, and Amar Jyoti, the proto-feminist
tale of a woman turning into a pirate and declaring war on
the state when she is denied legal custody of her son, made
Prabhat one of the finest producers in the country.

Photo credit: Film Heritage Foundation

Prabhats greatest cinematic achievement was DamleFathelals Sant Tukaram (1936), a biopic of the seventeenthcentury Maharashtrian saint. The film holds up surprisingly
well, is a triumph in all departments of filmmaking, and
boasts of two remarkable central performances by
Vishnupant Pagnis as Tukaram and Gauri as his earthy and
practical wife Jijai. A huge success at the box-office (it ran for

57 weeks in Mumbai alone), Sant Tukaram also won critical

acclaim at the Venice Film Festival in 1937, where it was
judged as one of the three best movies of the year
alongside Maria Nover of Hungary and Flying Doctor from
Australia.

V Shantarams trilogy of thought-provoking bilinguals in

Marathi and Hindi Kunku/Duniya Na
Mane (1937), Manoos/Aadmi (1939)
and Shejari/Padosi (1941) is among Prabhats greatest
highs. While Manoos/Aadmi sensitively explored the love
story between a prostitute and a police constable
and Shejari/Padosi addressed the need for communal
harmony, Kunku/Duniya Na Mane showed a strong female
protagonist, played by Shanta Apte, who refuses to accept
her marriage to a much older man.

The studio system hit its creative peak in the 1940s, but the
end was near because of several factors, including the entry
of freelancers and stand-alone filmmakers and financers, the
creation of the star system, and severe restrictions on the
import of raw stock during World War II. Freelancers could
hire studios and equipment as they pleased, while stars
found that they could earn more from a single movie than
from what they made in an entire year as a studio employee.
Actors began abandoning the studios, which then had to
cough up market rates for the services of their former
employees. The self-sufficiency of big studios was especially

hampered since they had huge overheads. The films too

began deteriorating, with little thought to their content and
quality. Prabhat was as badly affected as the rest, shutting
down in 1953, but not before giving us some more fine films,
such as Sant Gyaneshwar (1940) and Sant Sakhu (1941).

Photo credit: Film Heritage Foundation

Today, the Film and Television Institute of India occupies the

land that once belonged to the studio in Pune. Its fitting that
a filmmaking school has come up on the spot where one of
the best nurseries of talent once stood.

Photo credit: Karan Bali

Imperial Films Company

Est: 1926. Successor to the Majestic and Royal Art Film companies set up
by Ardeshir Irani as a diversification of his exhibition interests in partnership
with Esoofally?, Mohammed Ali and Dawoodji Rangwala. Organised as a vertically
integrated combine with its own exhibition infrastructure. Started following the
decline of Kohinoor, it continued many of the latters Mohanlal Dave-inspired
genres, often with the same stars and film-makers. Imperial became closely
associated with the costumed historical genre launched with Anarkali (1928), shot
and released almost overnight in direct competition to Charu Roys [[The Loves of a
Mughal Prince]] (1928). Irani also rushed out Alam Ara (1931), released as Indias
first full talkie narrowly beating Madan Theatres [[Shirin Farhad
|Shirin Farhad]] (1931). Imperial was the first studio to shoot scenes at night (in
Khwab-e- Hasti, 1929) using incandescent lamps. It owned Indias top silent
star, Sulochana?, and promoted her along with Zubeida, Jilloo and, for a while, the
young Prithviraj Kapoor. This was perhaps the first major instance of a deliberate
manufacturing of a star-cult as a marketing strategy. Top Imperial film-makers
include R.S. Choudhury, B.P. Mishra and Mohan Bhavnani, whose film-making set
the house style, as did Nandlal Jaswantlals sound films. A fair number of the
studios talkies were remakes of its own silent hits with Sulochana (Anarkali, 1928
& 1935), [[Wildcat of Bombay]] (1927) became Bambai Ki Billi (1936), etc. It made
films in at least nine languages: Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Burmese,
Malay, Pushtu and Urdu. The first Iranian sound film, Dukhtar-e-Lur (aka Dokhtare
Lor Ya Irane Diruz Va Emruz, 1932) was also made here. Kisan Kanya (1937) by
Gidwani was Indias first indigenously manufactured colour film, made with the
Cinecolour process. When it closed in 1938, its economic and generic inheritance
was continued by Sagar Movietone.
Studio

The Talkie Revolution, 1931, and the rise of

Indian cinema
May 3, 2013, 9:02 PM IST Sharmistha Gooptu in 175 Years | Entertainment | TOI

Imported talking pictures, mainly from America, were already showing in

Indiawhen Bombays Imperial Film Company released the first full-length Indian
talkie Alam Ara on 14 March 1931. About the film, Times of India wrote, [Alam
Ara] is proving to a great attraction at the Majestic Cinema, and crowded houses
have been the order of the day. It set a rage for the talkies, and though foreign
films retained a large share of the market well into the 1930s, Indian
productions in the regional languages were now in great demand. The coming of

sound to films in the early 30s marked the rise of Indian cinema, edging out the
advantage enjoyed by imported films in the silent era, when the largest share of
the Indian market was taken by American films. The talkie fever led to a sudden
spurt in production and a mushrooming of talkie concerns, but with an equally
high mortality rate that created a few years of intense flux for the cinema
industry. However, this transition also made for the rise of a host of new
operators, who would become the industrys vanguard in the first talkie era.

Talkie production was not simply a more expensive proposition than silent films,
but an altogether new enterprise which called for an overhauling of the existing
systems of production and exhibition. As observed in the Indian Cinematograph
Year Book, 1938, Producers, the country over, were either transforming their
old studios or building anew, in a raging tearing manner, to house the new order
of things. Exhibitors, on their part, had to replace their silent projectors with
sound equipment and make their theatres sound proof. By the latter half of the
1930s both Bengal and Bombay had stabilized into full-fledged talkie industries,
with overall more structured systems than in the silent era.
Given that Urdu and Hindi were the languages with the greatest reach across
the Indian subcontinent, Hindi-Urdu quickly became standardized as the
language of the talkies. The extensive use of song and dance in the early talkies

favored the use of Urdu, which was the language of shairi, musical performance
and the nautch in northern Indian. In Calcutta, Madan Theatres- the
subcontinents biggest film corporation- produced a series of Hindi-Urdu talkies
beginning with the musical Shirin Farhad (1931), based on a legend from
the Shahnama which had been successfully played on the Parsi stage. With
Master Nissar and Urdu songstress Jehan Ara Kajjan in the lead roles, the film
created a box-office record. It was followed by a series of Arabian Nights type
adventure-romances, of which the most famous was the 1932 hit Indrasabha.
The film had more than seventy songs, and showed dancers wearing legrevealing costumes.
New talkie concerns proliferated in these years, and were often started up by
the young and educated. The talkie studios brought along a new class of
professionals and instituted job specializations of the kind unknown in the silent
era. The specialized functions of dialogue writing, music composition, sound
recording and shooting in artificial light, and the overall complexity of talkie
production as compared to silent films advanced the Indian film industry as a
whole.

Legacy
The Bombay Talkies story is full of magic and color. By 1932,
Himanshu Rai was back in India after having been exposed to
fi lmmaking 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 eff ort 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 fi nancing.
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 fi eld 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, fi nanciers during those times

would face an impossible challenge when it came to getting returns

on their investment.
It was during this hunt for fi nanciers that Himanshu Rai came in
contact with Shri. Abhimanyu Prasad Singh, a close friend
of Seth Badriprasad Dube, who was a well known fi nancier. Seth
Badriprasad refused to fi nance 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 infl uenced 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
off ered. 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 fi t to continue living if he couldn't
follow his dreams. Rajnarayan Dube decided that Himanshu Rai
was onto something here and fi nalized 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
fi nancial force in the country.
On 22nd June, 1934, Bombay Talkies began operations . The
movie company was named by Shri. Dube's mother, Shrimati
Gayatri Devi. Though Light of Asia was a concept which Himanshu
Rai built during his days in Europe, the fi rst fi lm 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 fi lms
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 ), 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 fi rst 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 fi nanced these fl edgling 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 fi lmmaking to be a respectable profession. He thus
stipulated that Bombay Talkies would only hire graduates. He
hoped this move would legitimize the Indian fi lm industry of the
thirties and forties, and it certainly did. Besides this,Shri. Dube also
wanted the Indian fi lm 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
Dube was 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 fi rst
member). He also helped grow the regional fi lm 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 diffi cult in many ways. The company had
several movies on the fl oor but they could not get them fi nished
because the crucial German technicians had been arrested and
detained by the British Government. At this point, 15-20 fi lms were
on the production fl oor and were stalled pretty badly. Himanshu Rai
suff ered 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 fi lm 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.34000crores. 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 fi lms, had introduced 280 new talents, built 400
theatres across the country and had fi nanced more than 700 fi lms.
At this time Shri. Rajnarayan Dubedecided that he and his
company had arrived at the goal that they had set out to complete
two decades earlier. Indian fi lms 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.
60 years later, his grandson Abhay Kumar has begun working in
fi lms. And so 100 years after birth of Indian cinema, Bombay
Talkies, the company that started it all is now making a comeback.
Due
to
massive
demand
from
millions
of
Indian
movie
lovers, Abhay Kumar wants to give all Indians the gift of the new

Bombay Talkies. This signals the beginning of a new era in Indian

cinema.