Reel Pleasures. Laura Fair
the distributors operating out of South Africa, Tanzanians negotiated to choose English-language films from a buffet of options. “You would take five from this guy, three from that one, four from another,” explained one exhibitor. “And each one would fight to get the end of the month dates, because that was when people got paid and when business was best.”91 Exhibitors could play distributors off against each other to get the best films on the best days and for the best terms. Typically, each theater received the bulk of its films from one agent, but East Africans refused to sign exclusive contracts during this period, which also gave them leverage in negotiating rental terms.
Block booking and blind selling were other standard features of contracts in oligopolistic markets that East Africans avoided, and as a result, Tanzanians enjoyed the best films produced by the major studios, rather than the B- and C-grade movies screened in much of the rest of the continent. Under block-booking and blind-selling arrangements, a distributor was given the power to book anywhere from twenty-six to fifty-two weeks of a theater’s schedule, sending the exhibitor films of various qualities with no guarantee that particular titles or stars would be included. Once signed, these contracts lasted for years.92 From the earliest days, Jariwalla refused to capitulate to such terms; he chose what films were screened in his theaters, and as a result, Tanzanians were treated to some of the best American product. During any given week in the 1930s, the Royal might screen an American or British drama on Monday and Tuesday followed by an Abbott and Costello or Laurel and Hardy comedy or an adventure film such as The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939) or King Kong (Cooper, 1933) on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Saturday’s bill would cater to the European crowd, often featuring a musical starring Bing Crosby, Ginger Rogers, Ethel Merman, or Shirley Temple.93 Sundays were always reserved for Indian and Egyptian films. Never did a Tanzanian theater run the same 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