English-language film for days or weeks on end, which was standard practice where oligarchy and block booking prevailed. Tanzanian exhibitors also felt free to swap out a scheduled title for something else on hand if they thought the scheduled feature would flop; in South Africa, Schlesinger was reputed to put men out of business if they tried such a stunt. Reiterating what many exhibitors told me, one interviewee said, “The distributor might get mad and send you a letter, ‘Why didn’t you show this film on the dates we told you to?’ But it is just a letter, so you stick it in the file and that is it. Business continues as usual. Really though, they rarely found out.” In East Africa, distance—combined with competition between distributors—increased an exhibitor’s ability to run his show as he liked.94
Tanzanians continued to demand high-quality English-language films throughout the colonial era, which also set them apart from exhibitors elsewhere on the continent. Often, exhibitors who catered to nonwhite audiences could only access films of the poorest quality. In Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Ghana, second- or third-rank films, dominated by B- and C-class westerns, comprised the majority of English-language films. In those countries, westerns and the cinema often became synonymous, so prevalent were the westerns of “poverty row” studios. In Ghana, according to Gareth McFeely, fewer than one film in ten came from a major production company.95 In Tanzania, by contrast, westerns were also screened but not excessively, and they came from major studios and featured top stars such as Alan Ladd, Gary Cooper, and Robert Mitchum. Tanzanian exhibitors knew global films and their local fans, and they insisted on choosing movies that would please the crowd. Musical westerns, starring the singing duo Roy Rogers and Dale Evans or the singing cowboy Gene Autry, were chosen over the films of John Wayne because singing cowboys were more popular in Tanzania than tough-talking ones.96 In the category of dramas too, Tanzanian exhibitors often chose stars with musical skills. The most acclaimed actors and actresses graced local screens. Over the course of just a few months in 1950, films starring Ginger Rogers, Lon Chaney, Dorothy Lamour, Carmen Miranda, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Susan Hayward, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Bette Davis, and many others were shown.97
Across the globe, the highest earnings were amassed by those who controlled both exhibition and distribution as a single unit. But the fact that Tanzanian theaters were all independently owned and that local distributors did not consolidate into vertically integrated distribution-exhibition companies further enhanced the quality of the local cinematic scene. Indo-African and Majestic were the largest distribution groups in East Africa, but each controlled less than a handful of theaters as integrated distribution-exhibition units, or some 10 percent of the theaters in the nation. During interviews, I repeatedly pushed interviewees to explain why neither Indo-African nor Majestic made efforts to buy up independent theaters or assume oligarchic control of the industry. The answer in part was that Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar were by far the two most lucrative markets, so financially, it simply did not make sense to purchase upcountry theaters given the investment costs and slow rates of return. But in the United States, Britain, Australia, and South Africa, this did not stop dominant chains from taking over small theaters in regional towns or forcing independents out of business. In those countries, the business culture venerated monopolies, and power was asserted through aggressive dominance. Taking it all made one a man. East Africans, in contrast, did not think a monopoly was beneficial, even if it did yield higher profits. None of the independent exhibitors I interviewed had ever been pressured to consolidate, sell, or capitulate, prior to nationalization. The business dictum was different in Tanzania, they maintained: live and let live was the motto. Putting others out of business was not only petty and vindictive, it was also socially and economically counterproductive. A good businessman created possibilities for others; he acted as a contact in a circuit, facilitating the circulation of information, opportunities, cash, connections, experience, and skill. Doing so, he established himself as a good man. In East Africa, entrepreneurs in the first half of the twentieth century balanced the desire for profits against other expectations, obligations, and rewards.
PROFITS, RISKS, AND COSTS
Through the 1950s, local distributors took half or more of the film earnings in the country, but they also shouldered the greatest financial risks. It was expensive to secure copyrights and buy prints. The distributors had to know what local audiences liked as well as what kind of global product was available at a price they could afford. They needed to maintain contacts with production studios so that they knew what was in the works and when it might be available for display on the local circuit. And sometimes, they had to commit to taking films from Indian studios while they were still in production and no one had any idea what the final products would actually look like.98 They could never be certain, no matter who the stars were, that a given film would earn enough to cover costs. Certain films, even some that were quite expensive to buy, utterly flopped at the local box office. A blockbuster or superhit could earn back the cost of purchase in Dar es Salaam alone, but importers hit this mark only once or twice a year even if everything worked just as they planned.
If earnings in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar paid for a film, a distributor could count up-country proceeds as profit. In a good year, perhaps 20 percent of the films imported by a distributor would turn a decent profit; an equal number would lose money.99 The vast majority simply broke even. Asad Talati began running United Film Distributors (UFD) for his father after returning from his studies in London. (UFD was the distribution arm of Indo-African when the company split into exhibition and distribution firms in 1958.) He recalled that their highest-grossing film before independence was Junglee (Subodh Mukherjee, 1961). They opened it at the Sultana, their own theater in Zanzibar, where it earned the equivalent of $4,600, and they ran it for an unprecedented five Sundays and Mondays. But legal rights and print costs for a movie such as Junglee were on the order of $12,000. The film was a superhit by audience standards in Zanzibar, but UFD still had quite a way to go to break even, much less see a profit. Without extensive knowledge of both the local market and global supply, as well as trustworthy and dependable local and international partners, a distributor could easily go bankrupt.
For exhibitors, the profits accrued from operating a cinema were more social than economic. All the exhibitors in Tanzania had other businesses or professions before they opened a cinema. Many from the coast were traders or importers of manufactured goods and exporters of Tanzanian raw materials. Others earned their living as gold- and silversmiths or merchants selling everything from food and clothing to automotive spare parts. Some operated small factories producing soda or nails. Still others were professionals, including contractors, engineers, lawyers, and civil servants. What they had in common was that, to a man, they considered their cinemas a side business, a hobby, or something for personal and communal entertainment. Operating a cinema, I was told again and again, was “a labor of love.” As one proprietor said, “The actual financial profits earned from the cinema were meager. These were the kinds of profits that could feed you, but little more. If you wanted to build a house, or educate your children, you needed to have another type of business.”100 Thus, for example, K. R. Juma, who built the Highland Cinema in Iringa in the 1950s, ran a transport business with lorries, as well as a store, a soda factory, a gas station, and an automotive spare parts store. “It was these other businesses that really earned him money,” said his nephew Feroz. “It wasn’t easy for anyone to live off of cinema alone. Everyone had to have another type of business to survive, and yet another to support the cinema.” Someone else laughed when I asked about profits: “Profits? We earned pennies. But boy did we have a good time.”101
The accuracy of these remarks was confirmed by my analysis of available returns and accounts. The archival, tax, and business records are limited, but they indicate that even large theaters in the most lucrative markets made only modest profits. In Zanzibar in the 1940s and 1950s, average earnings were roughly equivalent to $3,000 a year (or about $30,000 in 2016 dollars).102 In 1960, the reported profits earned by Indo-African’s cinemas in Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, and Mombasa—three of the best markets in the region—were the equivalent of $7,644, and that sum had to be split between six investors.103 Moreover, returns were slow and incremental. Repaying the initial
