the owners were determined to do the job right. They also renovated the facade of the theater to make it look more modern and less like the godown that it once was.55
Figure 1.9 Business letterhead of the Avalon Cinema, Dar es Salaam
Rising to meet the challenge, Hassanali Hameer Hasham, owner of the Majestic Cinema in Zanzibar and the main competitive rival of Indo-African, opened the Empress Cinema in 1954, just a short walk away from the Avalon. Built and equipped at a cost of $420,000 (or roughly $4.2 million today), the Empress was the largest theater in the nation, accommodating 793 patrons—47 more than the refurbished Avalon. The Empress also bragged of the largest balcony in Tanzania, with room for 330 people in widely spaced and deeply terraced rows.56 Of course, the Empress also featured CinemaScope projection, a wide screen for both CinemaScope’s panoramic films and the latest 3-D features, specially designed acoustic ceiling tiles, and multiple speakers for stereophonic sound. According to the European press, however, its crowning glory was a functioning air-conditioning system, indicative of the owners’ determination to assure every aspect of their patrons’ comfort. Even the European population of Dar es Salaam applauded the owners for their attention to detail, comfort, and design.57 Such competition guaranteed access to films and venues that were every bit the equal of midcentury London and Bombay.
By the mid-1950s, adding an adjoining bar and restaurant to a cinema also became de rigueur for a modern leisure venue on the mainland. Despite the fact that many key investors and members of the moviegoing public were Muslim, nearly all the cinemas that were opened or renovated after the war featured a bar. The Odeon was the first theater in Dar es Salaam to serve alcohol, and according to some, this helped it retain its edge even when better pictures were shown at the Avalon and the Empire.58 When the Avalon was renovated, $70,000 was invested in building an adjoining restaurant and two bars. The Empress again one-upped its competitors, including two restaurants in its building as well as a large bar with a parquet dance floor that could be viewed by the patrons in the upper restaurant, adjacent to the cinema’s balcony seating. The bar provided an added enticement for Europeans as well as “modern” urban men, for they could fulfill their gendered obligation by taking the family out to see a movie but then excuse themselves to join others who found the bar more entertaining. It was not uncommon in the 1950s for Muslim men to mix business and pleasure in venues where alcohol was served: being open to others’ social drinking was one of many signs of being modern.
After the war, discourses of modernization circulated widely in East Africa, spurred in part by the imam of the Shia Ismailis, Sultan Muhammed Shah, the Aga Khan I. Regarded as a liberal innovator on many social issues, he actively encouraged Muslim women to pursue advanced degrees, enter the workforce, and abandon the hijab in favor of Western dress. In East Africa, he also inaugurated numerous large-scale investments in public welfare, including health care facilities, educational institutions, and modern affordable housing. He owned numerous prize-winning thoroughbreds, and he was the father of Aly Khan, the third husband of the American actress Rita Hayworth.59 Presumably, he had no problem with the head of the Ismaili religious community in Tanzania, Kassum Sunderji, owning a cinema that featured a bar. Kassum, after all, made his initial fortune selling spirits and wine to Europeans, and that did not keep him from praying each day or donating generously to philanthropic endeavors. Practicality in business matters allowed him to fulfill his religious and social obligations. For those familiar with the competitive rivalry in Tanzanian football, dance, and music groups in the 1950s, the persistent one-upmanship that typified the business dealings of cinema owners surely strikes a chord.60
Of course, business rivalry centered on film and turning out the largest weekly crowd. When tickets for a theater’s movie turned up on the black market or when patrons had to be seated on soda crates in the aisles due to overcrowding, the reputations of the theater’s owners and workers blossomed; they and their public had scored. Authorities repeatedly chastised cinema managers for not working harder with the police to end the black market trade in movie tickets, but those authorities failed to realize how much black market sales augmented prestige.
In Dar es Salaam, the Empire might run Pyaar (Kapoor, 1950), featuring Raj Kapoor and Nargis, against the Avalon’s premier of Guru Dutt’s Baazi (1951), with heartthrobs Dev Anand and Geita Bali. The smaller Azania would counter with an Egyptian film such as Gharan Rakissa (Rafla, 1950) featuring Muhammed Fawzi and Noor el-Hooda, making it a tough choice all around for film fans on Saturdays and Sundays. In 1953, if the Empire in Zanzibar started the week with Ivanhoe (Thorpe, 1952), starring Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor, the Majestic might counter with a tried but true offering of Samson and Delilah (DeMille, 1949), with Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature. In general, theaters in Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam screened films within six to nine months of their opening in New York or Bombay, though credit, connections, or shipping difficulties sometimes resulted in a delay. The aim was also to open a new film at each screening, but if the new movie on hand could not compete with a rival’s offering, then managers pulled the best from available stock to remain competitive in the battle for the public’s affection and leisure spending. A film such as Samson and Delilah might have been five years old in 1953, but as chapter 4 shows, it had all the elements that Tanzanians prized in movies. As late as 2004, it still held audiences spellbound when screened on ferries running between Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar.
Despite their no-holds-barred rivalry in putting on the best shows and attracting the most fans, competing owners and managers maintained friendly professional and personal relations. If one man’s projectors went down, his rival would offer a spare to tide him over. If someone needed a film because his supplier sent him a dud, his competitor supported him with the best film he had available. Owners, managers, and workers from different theaters conversed frequently, sharing news about business and global industrial developments, national and community politics, local gossip, films, and their children’s studies. They shared laments and commiseration in their common battles with censors, customs officers, and municipal authorities. They invited each other to their children’s weddings and stood by each other at family funerals. And any worker from any theater could get a free seat or two at a rival’s place simply by showing up. All this gave the industry a particular character and appeal. For East African cinematic capitalists, being known as a decent human being was more valuable than pushing a rival to fail.
EARNING SOCIAL CAPITAL IN THE DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION INDUSTRIES
Exhibition and distribution were always and everywhere mutually dependent, but there was no consensus on how the profits from ticket sales would be shared or what the nature of the social, economic, and political relationships between exhibitors and distributors would be like. Tracing the growth and development of exhibition and distribution in Tanzania illuminates how entrepreneurs built industries that supported profitable local businesses while adhering to local social values. Generating profit from the supply of films was, of course, a goal of distributors across the globe. The greatest profits came from screening each film before the widest possible audience, and because distributors and exhibitors had to share box office proceeds, the greatest returns to distributors came when they also controlled exhibition. In the United States and South Africa, the law allowed distributors to consolidate theaters under their ownership and monopolize film supply, making it difficult for independent alternatives to survive. Distributors in these places also maintained control over exhibitors by requiring them to sign contracts for exclusive supply, thereby precluding the showing of others’ films. These contracts typically lasted for years and often committed an exhibitor to accepting certain quantities of low-grade product for every hit provided. Vertical integration, hostile takeovers, “block booking,” and harsh legal contracts may have comprised one way of organizing these businesses, but this model was flatly rejected by industry pioneers in Tanzania.
Though
