Reel Pleasures. Laura Fair

fifty-fifty split of box office receipts was a concrete expression of a mutually beneficial relationship, and once again, trust was key: a distributor had to trust his exhibitor to honestly report earnings. If he doubted the exhibitor’s accounting, he had two options: either end the relationship or require that films be paid for on a flat-fee basis, known in the industry as a minimum guarantee (or MG). Here, a flat fee was paid to the distributor regardless of how a film did at the box office. MGs worked to the distributors’ advantage financially and were common in countries with oligopolistic distribution systems, but they were rarely utilized in Tanzania before independence. If a Tanzanian exhibitor was placed on MG terms, the subtext was that he was not honest. Although he had other distributors he could turn to, word of his status as an MG client would soon circulate through the grapevine, and he would have difficulty negotiating a percentage-based deal with a new partner. In the 1950s, local distributors were reluctant to demand an MG, in part because they needed clients to screen their films and had to offer attractive terms to secure partners. A distributor with a habit of demanding an MG also signaled that he was not the kind of man most wanted to have a relationship with: he did not trust his partner, and he selfishly demanded the lion’s share of the profits.

      Following the lead of American producer-distributor cartels, which made heavy use of the diplomatic core in negotiating import agreements in foreign territories, Indians too worked to consolidate overseas distribution after independence, with the aim of securing a greater share of the profits. In the late 1950s, two of the largest distributors from India, Indian Film Combine and Overseas Film Distributors, opened branches in Nairobi.⁸³ They marketed aggressively in East Africa, attempting to force out locally based, independent distributors and consolidate their control over imports. But it took years for them to make substantial inroads into the Tanzanian market because local exhibitors saw value in maintaining their “locavore” economy. Unlike local suppliers, foreign distributors presumed their own superiority in negotiations: if a percentage deal was offered, it was 70 percent to the distributor and 30 percent to the exhibitor, but more typically, flat-rate MG rentals prevailed. Contracts, rather than negotiated personal relationships, were the rule. Whenever possible, Tanzanian exhibitors kept their supply relationships with local men.

      Direct communication and the ability to negotiate over needs and desires were two other components of local business relationships that partners on both sides of the equation valued. Each exhibitor had a primary supplier, but rarely was this a strictly exclusive relationship. The manager of the Azania took most of his films from the Majestic group, but if Indo-African had a film he wanted, he usually could contact someone and get what he sought. If there was an opening in his program that local suppliers could not fill, he would turn to one of the Indian distributors to complete his bill. Theaters primarily supplied by Majestic also sometimes wanted to screen Egyptian or other films imported by Indo-African. And again, with a little face-to-face negotiation, a manager could clear a spot in his monthly schedule for the film he wanted, without being punished by his main supplier. Independent exhibitors in South Africa, by contrast, were bound by block-booking contracts and could not take a film from another supplier. Those who tried to do so found themselves in court for breach of contract and were often subsequently forced out of business entirely.⁸⁴ Shabir Jariwalla reiterated what I was told by many when he described business arrangements in Tanzania, “We did not write things down. We talked, we came to an agreement, and that was that. We did not need papers or a court. Business was done man to man.”⁸⁵

      Good-natured rivalry between locally based suppliers—fueled by exhibitors—served the interests of the grassroots moviegoing public. By the 1950s, many towns in Tanzania had two cinemas, each of which was independently owned, largely supplied by a different distributor, and equally invested in being voted “the best” by local fans. Exhibitors paid close attention to what their local competitors were screening and pushed their distributors to provide them with films of a similar or superior quality. Again, if their man could not deliver, they looked to someone who could. To keep their clients, the distributors worked tirelessly to provide the best films. Managers at Indo-African Theaters Ltd., working with someone in Raj Kapoor’s studios, secured a deal in the 1950s that gave them exclusive rights to distribute Kapoor’s films—arguably some of the most popular of the era—in East Africa. This meant that fans of Raj Kapoor (and other stars linked to him) were drawn to theaters supplied by Indo-African. In response, the Majestic group worked out a deal with Bhagwan—who was also a director, producer, and actor and famous for his comic antics and allegiance to the proletariat—to become his exclusive East African distributor.⁸⁶ If a theater supplied by Indo-African screened Awara (Kapoor, 1951), starring Raj Kapoor and Nargis, the rival theater supplied by the Majestic group countered with Bhagwan’s Albela (Bhagwan, 1951), featuring Bhagwan and Geeta Bali. On such days, nearly everyone in town was at the movies.

      In his nostalgic recollections of this era, Natwar Joshi recalled how this competitive rivalry between theaters and distributors enhanced the options for local fans. Before the Naaz opened its doors in Mombasa in the early 1950s, he reported, “Samji Kala and their company Majestic Theaters ruled the roost.” He claimed that without competition, “films lay canned in Samji Kala’s warehouse [for ages] before being released.”⁸⁷ But when Indo-African opened the Naaz, “Majestic declared an all-out war—fortunately to the advantage of the film going public.” Like men’s football clubs and women’s dance troupes during this era, each theater and its core fan base wanted to be able to claim they put on the best show. Having patrons sitting on soda crates in the aisles or standing for three hours along the back wall meant that both exhibitors and distributors had met their mark. The fact that an average cinemagoer like Joshi took the time to write an extended Internet posting about these competitions some sixty years after the events indicates how long these reputations could last and how invested local citizens were in their relationships with neighborhood cinemas.

      Tanzanian exhibitors’ relationships with suppliers of English-language films were categorically different from their relationships with local distributors, but even in this regard, Tanzanians exhibited an unusual degree of strength in negotiations over films and rental terms. In the 1910s, Jariwalla purchased used prints of American and British films from the same suppliers of Indian films that he dealt with in Bombay. Others were ordered directly from London, where many prints for English-language films could be purchased secondhand after they had finished their UK run. Most theaters around the world at the time found it cheaper and quicker to order used prints from London than to deal with American suppliers directly.⁸⁸ Hollywood executives put an end to the secondhand market out of the United Kingdom in the 1920s, demanding that all American films be purchased through one of their licensed agents. Isador Schlesinger had by that time also secured the license to serve as the sole distributor for the majority of British and American studios in South Africa. By 1938, he had secured monopoly rights to distribute for these same studios in all of Africa south of the equator, as stipulated in a contract he repeatedly tried to interpret as giving him exclusive control to everything south of the Sahara.⁸⁹ But through this entire period, Tanzanians maintained their rights to play the field, categorically refusing to concede to Schlesinger’s monopoly or dictatorial terms.

      Jariwalla chafed at Schlesinger’s demands and set the stage for future Tanzanians’ rights to negotiate. Through the 1920s, he continued to import used prints from suppliers in India; only with the advent of talkies did he sign a limited agreement with Schlesinger. But when Jariwalla learned of the rivalry between United Artists, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and 20th Century Fox, which spent the 1930s in protracted legal and theatrical battles fighting Schlesinger’s monopoly on distribution in South Africa, he chose to deal with the three American studios instead. Jariwalla signed with United Artists and 20th Century Fox to supply the Empire in Dar es Salaam and with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to supply the Royal in Zanzibar, cutting Schlesinger out of the Tanzanian market almost entirely. When Talati and his partners switched to sound and opened the Empire in Zanzibar, they too signed with United Artists and Fox.⁹⁰ Following the advice of elder “uncles” in the business, many Tanzanians who opened theaters in the 1940s and 1950s did their best to avoid dealing with Schlesinger. But his films were indeed quite good, and with all the theaters striving to offer original product, some ultimately ended up working with him—but only on reasonable terms. Rather than having exclusive agreements