When Film Came to Madras Stephen Putnam Hughes Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies 2010 1: 147 DOI: 10.1177/097492761000100206

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When Film Came to Madras Stephen Putnam Hughes BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies 2010 1: 147 DOI: 10.1177/097492761000100206

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BioScope When Film Came to Madras 1(2) 147–168 © 2010 Screen South Asia Trust SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Stephen Putnam Hughes Washington DC DOI: 10.1177/097492761000100206 http://bioscope.sagepub.com School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Abstract This article argues for the necessity of rethinking the beginnings of cinema in South India through a broader historical consideration of the specific entertainment contexts, which both preceded and were eventually transformed by the introduction of film. The first film exhibitors introduced film to Madras as a kind of European entertainment using the same local venues as the European variety circuit. Their shows conformed to a variety format and they frequently mixed films with other kinds of live performances. In addition to situating early touring cinema shows within the local, European entertainment circuits of Madras city, the second strand of my argument is that we need to rethink the mobility of early cinema in India. Rather than fixating on any discrete point of origin, I suggest that our attention needs to turn to how early cinema worked as a portable technology that traveled along various transnational networks through India. Thus, in our effort to ground early cinema as part of local history in Madras, we must also reconcile this with a better understanding of its spatial movement throughout South Asia and beyond.

Keywords Film history, touring exhibition, colonial cinema, India, Madras

The first film event in India has undoubtedly acquired more historical significance than it deserves. Almost every survey of the cinema in India starts with the same story of its original moment. Marius Sestier, a touring agent of the Lumière Brothers, first brought the “cinématographe” to India. It debuted at the Watson Hotel in Bombay during July 1896 only months after its debut in Europe and in the United States.1 The event was widely reported in the press around India:

Living Photography—It is impossible to deny that the recent invention of Messrs. Lumiere Brothers is almost the greatest scientific discovery of the age. By its means life-sized photographs are reproduced, every movement of the figure is accurate. The figures are projected upon a screen and can thus be witnessed by a great number of spectators.2

Thus, the arrival of moving pictures in India was portrayed as a wondrous invention of science, which realistically animated photographs in a spectacular fashion. Within the chronology of “firsts” which has conventionally defined the historiography of early cinema in India, this event has come to mark an abso- lute beginning. This story has provided a powerful myth of origin that directly links India to a global film history that begins with the Lumière Brothers.

Stephen Putnam Hughes is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

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There are numerous historiographic problems with privileging the first exhibition event as the official starting point for cinema in India.3 Marius Sestier got the headlines for screening the first shows in Bombay, but he did not stay in the country for more than six weeks. After his run of shows in Bombay ended in August, Sestier carried on to Australia, where he was the first to exhibit and make films. In contrast, Sestier’s contribution in India was a brief cameo. Yet, far too many scholars present this event as the sufficient cause for understanding the eventual popularity of cinema in India. The symbolic power of this film first has, in many ways, closed down the subject, so that this single event has come to stand for the beginnings of cinema in India. The story of this first film event hangs like a dead weight on the early period of cinema in India, closing down the horizon of our historical imagination. I suggest that we need to let go of our comfortable attachment to this established fact as a stable foundation for early film history and start a more critical interrogation of our conventional histories. The introduction of cinema in India was so thoroughly embedded as part of a multiplicity of pre- cinema practices that it cannot be merely understood as an isolated and novel event. Accordingly, I seek to rethink the beginnings of cinema in South India through a broader historical consideration of the specific entertainment contexts, which both preceded and were eventually transformed by the introduction of film. This approach is also necessary for addressing larger questions about early audiences—who were they, what were they expecting, and how were they addressed by film exhibitors and their films? I argue that the early period of cinema in India and specifically South India, was overwhelmingly European in orientation. The first film exhibitors introduced the cinema to Madras as a kind of European entertainment. In this regard, the introduction of the cinema in India was not so different from the entertainment’s early career in the West, where it was not only based on the representational strategies, subject matter and vast repertoire of the Victorian stage, vaudeville and magic lantern shows, as well as other popular amusements, but also integrated into mostly lowbrow entertainment venues and contexts.4 Similarly, the early film exhibitors in Madras used the same local venues as the European variety circuit, their shows conformed to a variety format and they frequently mixed films with other kinds of live performances. However, the introduction of motion pictures in Madras was also inflected by the colonial context of British India and was aimed at a relatively higher-class clientele than was the case in Europe and North America. In addition to situating early touring cinema shows within the local European entertainment circuits of Madras city, the second strand of my argument is that we need to rethink the mobility of early cinema in India. Rather than fixating on any discrete point of origin, I suggest that our attention needs to turn to how early cinema worked as a portable technology that traveled along various transnational networks through India. Thus, in our effort to ground early cinema as part of local history in Madras, we must also reconcile this with a better understanding of its spatial movement throughout South Asia and beyond. Though early film exhibitors appeared and then disappeared at short intervals, Madras served as a nodal point in the circulation of motion pictures at the end of the nineteenth century. The movement of films was primarily organized through the multiple circulatory and constitutive practices of the British Empire, which included transportation, commerce, and social networks. Amongst these vectors, the most important for early cinema were the touring entertainment companies that traveled along a well-established European variety entertainment circuit across the British Empire in the subcontinent as well as through Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania. Sometimes referred to colloquially as “strolling players,” these variety entertainment companies periodically visited Madras for short engagements, predominantly catering to European and native elite audiences. Within the colonial sociology of Madras,

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Downloaded from bio.sagepub.com at Tehran University on December 2, 2010 When Film Came to Madras 149 early film was configured alongside these touring companies as a form of cosmopolitanism. Thus, films worked as both a representational and mobile practice to articulate Madras audiences across space and time within the British Empire and the wider world. My argument about this highly mobile and European orientation is important because it has been largely written out of the early history of cinema in India. This early period was so different from what later develops as the mainstream culture of cinema in India that it has been difficult for subsequent gen- erations to recognize and appreciate its alterity. Further, a lack of documentation and the eventual success of the Indian film industry have worked to obscure this early period. But perhaps, more than anything else, there has been an understandably nationalist slant to much of the history of cinema in India that has tended to privilege the early Indian contributions at the expense of a minority of more transient Europeans whose presence in the country has been negatively associated with British rule. This dominant European orientation of early cinema in India remains problematic within the dominant historical narratives about the triumph of the Indian nationalist movement and the success of the Indian film industry. Can we evaluate this early period without falling into a celebration of the “great white moment” in the early history of cinema in India? I believe that this is both possible and necessary if we are to begin to understand the earliest period of cinema in India. Both Europeans and Indians alike participated in the European orientation of early cinema and they did so as part of a colonial social hierarchy of the British Empire.

Colonial Entertainment in a Presidency Town

The urban entertainment culture of Madras conformed to the social and spatial divisions that separated the European and Indian residents of the city (Kaviraj, 1997). Each community had its own forms and styles of public entertainment performed in different languages, at different venues in largely separate parts of town, and attracted almost mutually exclusive audiences. The oldest and most established institutions of leisure amongst elite Europeans in Madras were the exclusive social clubs and athletic gym- kannas where all the male members gathered for drinks, games, sport, and gambling. The most important European social clubs at the end of the nineteenth century were the Madras Club and Adyar Club, which were, in the words of one English traveler, exceedingly fashionable and some of the finest in India (Bertram, 1911, p. 87). In addition there were two main sports clubs. The Madras Gymkanna Club located on the Island near the Fort specialized in racing, golf, polo, football, and trap shooting, while the other main sports club was the Madras Cricket Club based in Chepauk, which promoted both cricket and lawn tennis (South India Railway Company, 1900, p. 161). The top end of the entertainment hierarchy revolved around the social activities of the Governor, who served for an appointed term lasting no more than five years as the highest government official of Madras Presidency. This position involved a great deal of pomp and public ceremony, which was used to represent British authority and mark the hierarchical social order within the Presidency. In much the same way as Bernard Cohn (1983) has argued that the staging of colonial durbars and imperial assem- blages in Victorian India were key rituals in constituting the political authority, the Governor’s cultural activities marked the social hierarchy of power. While in Madras, at his official residence in the Government House at the north end of Mount Road, he and his wife regularly hosted dinners, balls, concerts and amateur theatricals at their Banqueting Hall as part of their official duties (see Image 1). In addition to hosting official events, the Governor was also the most important patron of European cultural

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Downloaded from bio.sagepub.com at Tehran University on December 2, 2010 150 Stephen Putnam Hughes events. For the organizers and performers of both amateur and commercial cultural events, the chance to perform for the Governor was the highest honor available in Madras, which not only conferred an official endorsement, but also ensured that the elite classes would be in attendance. The Governor’s attendance at such events was always arranged in advance, well advertised as part of the associated publicity and widely reported upon in local papers after the fact. In this way the Governor and the elite social circle which surrounded his activities conferred enormous prestige and support, which constituted the hierarchical ordering of European entertainments in Madras from the top. The Governor’s patronage was a key factor in the establishment of the most prestigious amateur theatrical and musical groups in the city, which provided the most regular performances for elite Europeans during the late nineteenth century.

Image 1. Banqueting Hall, Government House, Madras. Postcard. Source: Author’s personal collection.

In addition to these locally organized events, there was also another class of itinerant European entertainment, which was part of a vast circuit that stretched from Europe through the Middle East and Africa to East Asia and Australia. These touring commercial entertainment companies were organized around a number of different performance genres and formats including the circus, fair ground, variety shows, and comic opera. Among these itinerant amusements, the visits from touring musical hall companies with their variety performances were the main entertainment highlights for Europeans in Madras.5 During the late nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth century, the European community of Madras could, over

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Downloaded from bio.sagepub.com at Tehran University on December 2, 2010 When Film Came to Madras 151 the course of a year, look forward to seasonal visits by five or six of these variety shows. In an age before mass media, the widely traveled shows that came to Madras were part of a world market in entertainment, which formed what can be considered to be the first transnational circuit to operate on a global scale. This circuit thrived from the late nineteenth century until the World War I. Over this period, in Madras alone, hundreds of different companies and thousands of performers would have visited the city over a 25-year period. The performers, ranging from poor-house children to the classically trained, were predominantly from Australia and Britain, although there were also performers from continental Europe and some from the United States. These companies followed the major steam liner routes where Madras was just one stopover along a touring circuit that connected Europe to Africa and the Middle East through to all major cities of Asia and Australia. Each show came with its own unique combination of specialty acts which could include dance, drama, singing, comedy, ventriloquism, magic, hypnotism, mind reading, electro-magnetic tricks, bicycling tricks, skate dancing, tumbling or feats of physical strength. They usually did not remain for more than five days at any venue and no more than several weeks at a stretch in the city. In the years immediately preceding the introduction of cinema, the most prestigious venue for touring entertainment companies in Madras was the Victoria Public Hall. The hall was located next to the Madras Corporation offices in the Ripon Building on the south end of People’s Park, which was a place of popular resort in the late nineteenth century. The building was commissioned during the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887 as a Town Hall for the use and benefit of the public in Madras City. Designed by the well-known architect, R.F. Chisolm, the building opened in 1892. The Trustees included an even number of both British and Indian members, though only European Trustees served as officers in charge of maintaining and hiring out the hall. They were empowered to rent the hall out for:

…the purpose of public or private meetings, exhibitions, lectures, concerts, dinners, balls, theatrical or musical performances, nautches (dances) or other entertainments and for any other purposes conducing to the moral, social, and intellectual welfare or rational recreation of the public of Madras, without reference the caste, creed or nationality. (South Indian Railway Company, 1913, p. 13)

The space inside was designed for multiple purposes. The main space for entertainment performances was the upper hall, which could accommodate 600 persons on the main floor and another 200 seated in an adjoining gallery. There was also a separate lower hall (beneath the main upper hall) suitable for a maximum of 600 persons, which could be used for meetings and exhibitions. The upper hall rental rates varied according to whom, for what purpose, and for how long the hall was to be used. The highest rates started at Rs 50 per night for professional theatrical parties, then Rs 25 for amateur dramatic societies, and Rs 20 for purely charitable purposes (“Asylum Press Almanac, 1898,” 1899, pp. 1150–1152). Roughly coinciding with the introduction of cinema to the city, the hall opened up a new kind of public meeting and entertainment space for the elite of Madras, shared by both Indians and Europeans alike, even though there was little overlap among these groups at any given event. By the turn of the twentieth century, Madras had three main venues for these touring shows, the Museum Theatre, Victoria Public Hall and the open ground at the Esplanade Maidan, where tents, depending on the season and weather, were pitched. The Esplanade, located near the High Court Buildings between George Town on the north and Fort St George on the south, functioned as a kind of common ground for all kinds of public entertainment, including both European and Indian varieties. These touring shows established the markets, venues, formats and standards, which first provided the

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Downloaded from bio.sagepub.com at Tehran University on December 2, 2010 152 Stephen Putnam Hughes cultural and social place for the cinema in Madras. Eventually, European variety entertainment would be, at least partially, undermined by the success of the cinema and largely vanish by the 1930s. However, throughout the first decades of the twentieth century, the cinema and other entertainments and live performances overlapped, coincided and mutually supported each other as the most popular European entertainment in colonial Madras. Even with these various outlets, there are repeated claims throughout the late nineteenth century at how poorly Madras residents supported traveling entertainment companies. In a letter to the editor of the Madras Times, published under the title “Madras Audiences,” one local complained that amongst “pros” in India, Madras was commonly considered to be the worst show town in the East and that the city was a deadly dull hole even for members of the Gym and the Clubs (Madras Times, March 17, 1897, p. 7).

Moving Pictures as Fair Ground Entertainment

The introduction of cinema in Madras was accommodated within and mediated by already established European entertainment practices, as outlined above. Thus, early cinema did not arrive with its mass audiences preordained, but was deployed by a range of entrepreneurs as part of a variety of screen practices, entertainment genres and distribution circuits with which Madras audiences would have been already familiar. Over its first decade, the cinema appeared as part of fairground shows, magic lantern photographic displays, variety music hall turns, Christian education and charity work. In this sense, the cinema did not start out as being very “cinematic” but was always already implicated as part of some other institution and clustered along with a diverse proliferation of other new technologies being peddled as a form of commercial entertainment. During these early years, there was not even one stand- ardized name for motion picture technology. Almost every time motion pictures passed through Madras, they were not only presented as a differently named technology, but were also featured alongside other related technological innovations such as the phonograph and electric lighting. Thus, the introduction of motion pictures in Madras was a series of separate events involving various technical means over the course of about one decade, featuring a multiple array of parallel technologies. In this regard, the figure of Thomas Edison as a celebrity inventor was far more important in Madras than that of the Lumière Brothers. The first people in Madras to experience moving pictures would have seen them one person at a time through a peephole viewing machine within a fairground setting. One such show arrived in Madras from the cantonment town of Secunderabad during the first week of September 1896 without great fanfare. An amusement fair calling itself “Sea on Land” set up on the Esplanade Maidan just opposite the Ordinance Lines in Park Town (see Image 2). The show was organized around what the proprietor, S. C. Eaves, considered to be the main attraction, which was a steam powered amusement ride on mechanized boats with full rigging, masts and sails “very much like the pleasure boats of an English watering place” (Madras Mail, September 7, 1896, p. 1).6 In addition to this, Eaves offered a variety of other fairground type entertainments which he advertised as “the greatest of modern attractions,” featuring “illuminations nightly by electric light,” “splendid mechanical and long range shooting galleries,” “Edison’s latest phonograph or talking machine,” and “the marvelous kinetescope (sic) or living pictures” (Madras Mail, September 2, 1896, p. 1). His advertising, thus, gave special prominence to a cluster of Edison’s most famous scientific inventions—electric lighting, the phonograph, and the kinetoscope—all of which held

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Downloaded from bio.sagepub.com at Tehran University on December 2, 2010 When Film Came to Madras 153 a great novelty value for the Madras audiences in 1896. Thomas Edison’s reputation as a celebrity inventor was already well publicized in Madras, where local newspapers kept their readers regularly informed about his latest discoveries (for example, see Madras Times, September 10, 1897, p. 5). In particular, Edison’s continuing improvements on the phonograph were covered extensively during the 1880–1890s, even though the machines would not have been commercially available at that time in Madras. Edison’s reputation as a mythic hero of modern science not only sold newspapers, but was also repeatedly exploited by itinerant showmen during the early years of cinema in Madras. In this regard, Eaves was one of the numerous commercial showmen who exploited Edison’s prestigious name as a commercial entertainment strategy.

Image 2. Madras Mail, September 2, 1896, p. 1. Source: Author’s personal collection.

Somewhat buried amidst all the other “greatest modern attractions,” Eaves’ kinetoscope machine would have been among the very first, if not the first, to bring moving pictures to Madras audiences.7 Preceding the Lumière cinématographe by several years, Edison’s kinetoscope was basically a box with peepholes for viewing a continuous loop of 35mm film. Introduced for commercial release in 1894 as penny in the slot machines, Edison followed the already successful commercial model of phonograph parlors in marketing his kinetoscope in major cities of the US and Europe

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(Musser, 1991, pp. 29–56). But outside of the largest cities, traveling showmen touring with kinetoscope machines were responsible for the first widespread distribution of “living pictures” to paying audiences. The kinetoscope not only preceded the introduction of projected images, but also competitively overlapped with them into the early part of the twentieth century.8 And while the kinetoscope and its successor machine, the mutoscope, were probably never more than a very marginal and passing fad within the European entertainment circuit in India, the peephole viewing format on mobile machines has been widely used throughout the twentieth century by low budget itinerant showmen, widely known in north India as bioscopewallahs.9 Opening every evening from 5 pm, Eaves’ fun fair was reported to have drawn huge crowds and “proved to be a great source of attraction” (Madras Times, September 2, 1896, p. 7). For his mechanized steam powered boat trips he charged the relatively modest price of 4 annas for a first class ticket on boats “sumptuously fitted with cushions,” and 2 annas for a second class ticket, which would have been affordable for a wide range of both Europeans and Indians. Further, being located on the Esplanade, the show was in easy walking distance from Black Town, the most densely populated and Indian neighborhood of Madras. But from his advertising, Eaves also gives us some clues that he was, at least in part, specifically pitching his entertainment for children. He explicitly advertised special matinees for children on Saturday from 3–6 pm with the reduced rate of one anna per trip. Further, Eaves attracted favorable publicity by generously organizing free rides for boys and girls from the Civil and Military Orphans Asylums (Madras Times, September 4, 1896, p. 1; Madras Mail, September 7, 1896, p. 1). In addition to special concessions and charity events for children, Eaves also offered his machines for hire as a kind of educational lecture demonstration: “Private exhibitions can also be arranged with Edison’s phonograph at schools, colleges, and private residences on application” (Madras Mail, September 2, 1896, p. 1). Eaves’ engagement in Madras was, however, cut short after one week because of a serious accident with his electrical plant. The power for the entire show was run on a large steam engine with a coal fired boiler, which in turn ran two other engines of six and four horsepower for driving the dynamo which worked the electric light, two phonographs, and the kinetoscope. It was reported that he was not able to obtain locally the required parts for repair or secure another supply of electricity (Madras Mail, September 8, 1896, p. 5), which effectively brought an end to the first moving picture show in Madras. Visits to Madras, such as Eaves’, may have been brief and only reached a small number of local residents, but they helped create a precedent for moving pictures, which meant that subsequent touring exhibitions were not an entirely novel experience.

Stevenson’s Cinematograph

Coming just three months after Eaves’ truncated visit to the city, the first projected cinema event in Madras did not, at the time, seem like a momentous occasion. Unlike in Bombay, where the cinema was given a triumphant premiere by an emissary dispatched by the Lumière Brothers themselves, the first film shows in Madras were a much more low key event put on by someone who had already been living and working in the city for at least several years. T. Stevenson, the proprietor of the Madras Photographic Store (167 Mount Road) offered the first “cinematograph or animated photograph” shows over three nights at the beginning of December 1896 (see Image 3).10 From at least 1895 (“Asylum Press Almanac, 1898,” 1899), Stevenson’s photographic business specialized in the import and supply of dark room

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Downloaded from bio.sagepub.com at Tehran University on December 2, 2010 When Film Came to Madras 155 equipment and photographic papers. In addition to his knowledge of photographic equipment, Stevenson’s venture into animated pictures also displayed previous experience in the staging of magic lantern shows. His premiere started at 9:30 pm at the Victoria Public Hall and consisted of 10 short films and many magic lantern slides, many of which were of local interest, depicting views of Madras, such as the Guindy horse races and a Mowbray’s Road street scene. Madras audiences would already have been well acquainted with magic lantern lecture demonstrations, which had been regularly held in the city over the previous decades. But in the context of Stevenson’s first film exhibition, the juxtaposition of the static magic lantern photographic views with the animated photographs would have undoubtedly height- ened the novel effect of moving pictures. Stevenson was clearly using his familiarity with the technical operations of the magic lantern, its use to project images and its manipulation as an instrument of show- manship to help to stage these first film shows.11

Image 3. Madras Times, December 4, 1896, p. 1. Source: Author’s personal collection.

While the show was hailed in the English press, as the “latest development of photographic science,” a “present London sensation,” a “marvellous invention” and a first for Madras, the show seems to have been less than triumphant. It was more of a damp squib, literally. The first film shows coincided with a cyclonic storm, which dumped over five inches of rain on the evening of the first show. It was reported that only “a few adventurous ones went forth to see his show” (Madras Mail, December 8, 1896, p. 6).

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On top of the bad weather, the long anticipated opening ceremony of the newly constructed museum building, in nearby Egmore, was held on the same evening and diverted the leading citizens of Madras away from Stevenson’s show (Madras Times, December 7, 1896, p. 1). On a better night, Stevenson could have hoped to attract the most elite of Madras audiences. And with admission prices organized into three classes at Rs 3, 2, and 1, he was certainly pitching his entertainment at the high end of Madras society. Though, perhaps, it was better that the turnout was so low, since Stevenson clearly had yet to perfect his technique. One reviewer complained that many of the pictures exhibited were “not distinct enough and in some cases seemed too rapidly worked” (Madras Mail, December 9, 1896, p. 5). Another reviewer suggested that some of scenes needed to be better focused (Madras Times, December 7, 1896, p. 4). Obviously feeling sorry for Stevenson’s less than successful first run of shows, one reviewer encouraged him “not to be disheartened by the unfortunate circumstances he has had to contend with” and hoped that he would “give some further exhibitions in Madras with the weather in his favour” (Madras Mail, December 8, 1896, p. 6). Even with the bad weather, poor turnout and technical problems, it is certainly remarkable that Stevenson was able to pull off a cinematograph show in the first place. Just six months since their debut in India and only one year after the Lumière’s first public shows in Paris, Stevenson did very well to have made his own first public performance so early. Unlike Sestier, Stevenson was not one of the select Lumière operators and did not have access to a Lumière cinématographe machine, which was not yet commercially available and still a carefully protected commercial secret in 1896. At this early date, Lumière operators were doing their best to exploit their carefully protected worldwide monopoly and had not yet started to market their equipment and films (Barnouw, 1993, pp. 9–11). Whatever his projection machine, Stevenson’s familiarity with the commercial supply and technological aspects of magic lantern projectors would have greatly helped him operate, maintain, and service his cinematograph machine. This experience, no doubt, facilitated his early uptake of the technology and would have given him a significant competitive advantage over other entertainment entrepreneurs operating in British India. As for the films in this first screening, Stevenson was likely to have purchased them along with his machine from London, where there was already an active market for the supply of film prints by the summer of 1896 (Barnes, 1998, p. 136). The newspaper accounts of Stevenson’s shows do not give much detail on the films screened and are themselves somewhat inconsistent. For example, the Madras Times claimed that “More than a half a dozen moving photographs or cinematographs [sic] were exhibited, which elicited the admiration of the audience. Some of these were excellent, such as the harnessing of a donkey and a sailing ship, while others were not very distinct” (Madras Times, December 7, 1896, p. 4). The Madras Mail reported that about 10 pictures of unequal merit were exhibited, singling out the “Street scene in Paris,” “River Steamers,” and “The scene at a railway station with a train coming in” as being particularly good. From these accounts, we cannot be exactly certain which or how many films were screened. And even though some of the films reportedly screened by Stevenson sound very similar to some of the now classic first films from the Lumière catalogue, they were almost certainly acquired from British sources.12 The similarity in the description of Stevenson’s films with Lumière films is most likely explained by the fact that the early British filmmakers were strongly influenced by the topics and scenes of the Lumière films (Barnes, 1998, p. 225). Yet, even though contemporary newspaper accounts were rather vague, it is still possible to decisively identity several films from Stevenson’s first shows. From the descriptions of a film representing “the Czar’s recent entry into Paris” (Madras Mail,

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December 9, 1896, p. 5) and the donkey riding film (mentioned above), we can trace these films to the work of Esmé Collings, who was a portrait photographer working in Brighton, England (Barnes, 1998, pp. 186–190; Low and Manvell, 1949, pp. 19–20). From this, we can reasonably assume that at least some of the other films in Stevenson’s show came from this same seemingly obscure source. After his first public performances in Madras, Stevenson went on a “lengthy tour” throughout South India, traveling as far north as Hyderabad (Madras Mail, August 31, 1897, p. 1). Further research is needed to determine Stevenson’s itinerary outside of Madras, but we can be certain that he would have been the first to exhibit film shows in South India during the first half of 1897. The early movement of cinema from Madras to the rest of South India would have followed the already established commercial routes. Stevenson’s route throughout South India was, undoubtedly, determined by the existing infrastructure of transportation. And since Stevenson’s equipment would have been both heavy and fragile, he presumably followed the most comfortable and convenient rail networks through South India. When Stevenson returned to Madras at the end of August 1897, he had gone into a new partnership with a Mr Crowden, secured a new supply of films, and greatly improved the technical quality of the show. Over two evenings at the Victoria Public Hall, the new partners gave four well attended and much appreciated cinematograph shows (see Image 4). One local newspaper account commented on what was considered a novelty in exhibiting two programs each night, one referred to as the matinee at 6:40 pm and the other an evening program at 9:30 pm. This scheduling of show times would soon become the norm, which is still followed to this day, but at the time these timings were considered to be an important innovation and one that opened up possibilities for new kinds of audiences. One reviewer favorably commented upon the convenience of the early show, which was somewhat shortened and offered slightly reduced ticket pricing at Rs 2, 1, and Annas 8, on account that it attracted a large number of children and those “who do not care for going out after dinner” (Madras Mail, August 31, 1897, p. 4). And what is more, the success of the early show did not undermine the later show, which offered the full program and higher ticket pricing at Rs 3, 2, and 1. It also “attracted a very much larger house than usually falls to the lot of after dinner entertainments in Madras” (ibid.). Stevenson and Crowden advertised the shows as being “improved and perfected.” Madras newspaper reviewers agreed that they were a significant upgrade on the first engagement during December 1896. On the first occasion “a few living pictures were exhibited together with ordinary magic lantern slides” but this time “the cinematograph provided the sole entertainment” (Madras Mail, August 31, 1897, p. 1). Stevenson had become more confident in his ability to hold his audience with moving pictures alone. Also, for this second run in Madras, Stevenson had organized musical accompaniment to be played behind the scenes, a much-appreciated addition to the show according to the Madras Mail correspondent (Madras Mail, August 31, 1897, p. 4). This gives a clear indication of Stevenson’s general movement from being a dealer in photographic equipment to becoming an itinerant showman. Yet even with these improvements, there were still some technical problems with the projection equipment. One newspaper reporter claimed that while not yet “altogether perfect, Stevenson has succeeded in greatly reducing the vibration and increasing the illumination, with excellent results” (ibid.). The other reviewer was less favorable in assessment claiming that some of the films were “marred by a lack of distinctness caused by want of exact focusing and by the extreme ‘jumpiness’ of the pictures which evidently did not run perfectly smoothly through the shutter bars” (Madras Times, September 1, 1897). The jumping flicker of the films got on the nerves of one reviewer, who described it as an uncomfortable “Hello-I’ve-got-em- again jim-jammy feeling that trickles coldly down the spine and makes you want to go out promptly and

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Downloaded from bio.sagepub.com at Tehran University on December 2, 2010 158 Stephen Putnam Hughes take all the pledges you can” (ibid.).13 Another complaint was the overbearing heat of the crowded auditorium, which required the reviewer to leave the auditorium at one point (ibid.). Even with these distractions and discomforts, Stevenson managed to attract large enough houses of appreciative audiences to make this second run a great success.

Image 4. Madras Times, August 28, 1897, p. 1. Source: Author’s personal collection.

The “special feature” of the evening’s program was the film of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Procession in London. The Diamond Jubilee was, arguably, the first big media event of the cinema age with at least 20 different companies and up to 40 cameramen filming the occasion in London. These

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Downloaded from bio.sagepub.com at Tehran University on December 2, 2010 When Film Came to Madras 159 films appealed to the patriotic excitement and spectacle that had been generated by the events on June 22 across India and the Empire more generally. The celebrations in Madras had been a major public event staged on a lavish and unprecedented scale, despite the fact that there were ongoing outbreaks of plague and famine in some parts of the Presidency. All businesses, public institutions, and organizations did their best to demonstrate their loyalty through elaborate decorations, which were reported to have “impressed the masses” and were “enjoyed by all classes” (“Asylum Press Almanac 1898,” 1899, pp. LII–LVI). Thus, just two months after these events, Stevenson’s films promised to tap into and rekin- dle the outpouring of popular excitement that this ritualized public display of patriotism had produced in Madras.14 He advertised them as a “realistic series of living pictures of all the celebrities who formed part of the greatest and most wonderful historical event of the age” (Madras Mail, August 28, 1897). For audiences in Madras the excitement of being able to watch the proceedings in London just over two months later in Madras was palpable. One review described the audience reaction: “It of course attracted considerable attention and applause and it was fine to see how the pictured crowd waved hats, handker- chiefs and sticks, and how the audience responded to the demonstrations with hand-clapping and cheers when the Queen went past” (Madras Times, September 1, 1897). Mediated through this cinematic screen practice this replayed imperial ritual was part of the ongoing articulation of political authority in Victorian India. Even if the Queen got top billing, the film show was constructed around a variety of appeals. Like the films from Stevenson’s first show, his program consisted of what we would today recognize as documentary footage, or in the words of the Madras Mail: “amusing and interesting scenes from real life.” They covered a wide variety of subjects, “among them being a carpenter’s shop, a game of leap frog, a boxing match, a street scene in Paris, and a railway station with the arrival of a train” (Madras Mail, August 31, 1897). Some of these short and simple scenes were repeat screenings from Stevenson’s first Madras shows, but there were also many new films added into the repertoire. Of these new films, Stevenson seems to have sourced his new materials from a variety of British filmmakers. Many of the films listed above closely match descriptions from the November 1896 catalogue of Robert W. Paul, who was at the time already emerging as the most important figure in early British cinema. One film described as excellent and “depicting a gallant rescue from drowning, the best portion being the fall overboard, followed by the dive in to the rescue and the splash” (Madras Mail, September 1, 1897) was certainly the work of Paul and listed in his catalogue as “Up the River” (Barnes, 1998, p. 250). Though, perhaps, the majority of the new films came from Paul, Stevenson was still screening Esmé Collings’ films as well. For example, one of Stevenson’s films that was praised as being excellent and described as “A rough sea at Brighton, the waves rolling up and dashing against the breakwater and rolling back” was Collings’ imitation of one of Paul’s most popular films, “Rough Sea at Dover” (Musser, 1990, pp. 117–118). Amidst this variety, Stevenson’s film program was dominated by an overwhelming British orientation. Most, if not all, of his films were very clearly British in their orientation. Views of London street scenes, the Tower Bridge, Piccadilly, skating in Hyde Park, the Portsmouth Dockyard and the seascape at Brighton all worked to firmly situate Stevenson’s film shows as a thoroughly British affair. On one hand, these films were a continuation of the screen practice of depicting typical views of Britain that had already been a popular staple on the magic lantern circuits in India in the years preceding the cinema. But redeployed as part of Stevenson and Crowden’s film program, they also helped set the stage for the spirit of patriotic celebration and excitement evoked by the Diamond Jubilee films.15 The films representing typical and familiar scenes from Britain offered the possibility of nostalgic attachment to a distant

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Downloaded from bio.sagepub.com at Tehran University on December 2, 2010 160 Stephen Putnam Hughes homeland or a patriotic identification with the imperial metropole, which in the context of Victorian India all served to reinforce a popular culture of British imperialism, which was reaching its high point during the 1890s.16 After establishing their British Imperial mode of address and giving due importance to Queen Victoria, Stevenson and Crowden also screened other films with a distinctive European appeal not usually associated with patriotism. According to the Madras newspaper correspondents, a colored film featuring the dancer L’oie Fuller’s Serpentine Dance was the real triumph of the show and the audience’s favorite.17 Originally from the US, but later settled in Paris, Fuller was a key early figure in the modern dance movement with close links to Art Nouveau, who used her own choreography and multi-colored lime lighting effects to create famous dance routines (Garelick, 2007). Stevenson screened the Fuller film immediately after the interval, using a film of a Can Can dance at the Moulin Rouge as a warm up act. One reporter wrote an effusive description of his experience of the films suggesting that the evening had started out warm, but the temperature increased as they arrived at the Moulin Rouge and got very warm indeed by the time the Fuller film was screened.

You could really almost imagine yourself in the Pav gazing breathlessly at the great dancer and trying to puzzle out to yourself the method in which she manoeuvres the great masses of drapery in which she is swathed. She twines and twists like a mad cloud and for an instant, at the end of the performance, a glimpse of a slender fairy figure is caught and then—phut—a bar of white light bursts through on the screen and it is over. (Madras Times, September 1, 1897)

Taken together, this pairing of two sexually suggestive films produced an atmosphere, described by the same reviewer as having “a nice rich corrugated blue tint.” This was obviously well appreciated by the audience who made repeated calls for an encore of the Fuller film, which “owing to the continued applause was exhibited a second time” (ibid.). These films projected sexual innuendo, yet they were tantalizingly brief and well enough contained within an overall mixed program as not to ruin the moral tenor of the event or preclude the attendance of women. As the Madras Times reporter explained, things righted themselves soon after the Fuller film, since the audience knew that the police would be marching in force for the film of the Jubilee Procession. After this engagement, Stevenson proceeded to Bangalore where he was the first to exhibit motion pictures at the beginning of September 1897. The debut shows attracted a record house in the Cubbon Rooms, which included a wide range from the most prestigious guests including the Mysore Maharaja and his tutor, Mr Fraser, alongside the Resident Colonel Robinson, with his family right down to “a repre- sentative element of Future India” (Madras Mail, September 6, 1897). Bangalore was to be the first stop en route of an extensive tour through North India from the North-West Frontier to Calcutta during the autumn of 1897. In the absence of further research to confirm his travel details, we do not know where or how far they toured. However, it seems highly unlikely that they would have managed to cover so much territory in time to return to Madras after only three months, suggesting that the tour was curtailed. When Stevenson and Crowden next returned to Madras in December 1897, they did so using a new name, the Cinematograph Company, and having acquired a new “Bioscope” machine (see Image 5). At this early date the name “Bioscope” specifically referred to Charles Urban’s highly successful projec- tor upgrade of Edison’s Vitascope, which was marketed by the London-based Warwick Trading Company from September 1897. Of particular importance for touring through India was that the Bioscope projectors were cranked by hand and did not require electricity. The partners advertised the

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Downloaded from bio.sagepub.com at Tehran University on December 2, 2010 When Film Came to Madras 161 new equipment as “The most perfect projecting machine yet invented, compared with which all other previous inventions are crude and faulty.” One previously critical Madras reviewer noted favorably that, “The Bioscope is a tremendous improvement on the old style; the pictures are now beautifully steady” (Madras Times, December 8, 1897). In what would very likely have been Stevenson and Crowden’s debut of the new Bioscope equipment, the Cinematograph Company held six shows over three days between December 7 and 9 at the Victoria Public Hall.

Image 5. Madras Mail, December 7, 1897, p. 1. Source: Author’s personal collection.

Stevenson’s third engagement in the city finally secured the recognition and prestige of the Governor’s patronage and presence on the opening night. To mark the occasion, they prominently advertised their show as a “grand fashionable night” to be performed under the “distinguished patronage of Arthur Havelock, Governor of Madras Presidency” along with his wife and staff. The emphasis of the night’s program was placed firmly upon loyalty and patriotism with yet another screening of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Procession films. In keeping with this theme, the rest of the evening’s films prominently featured life in the metropole. “Once again we were kindly taken by the hand in swift

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Downloaded from bio.sagepub.com at Tehran University on December 2, 2010 162 Stephen Putnam Hughes traveling and led back to town and all that ever went with evening dress—London streets, London sights, almost London sounds and smells, London frocks and shiny hats and fixings. Heigh ho!” (ibid.). The choice of film subjects was most worthy of attracting the Governor’s official patronage and presence. This patronage conclusively confirmed the cinematograph’s place alongside the most prestigious Euro- pean entertainments in the city and would have attracted audiences from the highest social circles. More than any of Stevenson’s previous films shows, this three-day run signified an elevated status for early cinema in Madras that is in clear contrast to any subsequent and commonly presumed association with the urban working classes. From his initial start in Madras, Stevenson went on to be a very important early figure in promoting the cinema throughout South Asia, though I have found no further mention of Crowden. Stevenson was a much more pivotal figure for the early history of cinema in India than Sestier, who, by all accounts, never ventured beyond Bombay during his brief stay in India. However, after the short run in December 1897, Stevenson and Crowden moved on from Madras and I have not found any evidence that they ever returned. By 1898, Stevenson was no longer listed as the proprietor for Madras Photographic Stores, having been replaced by J. Brown (Madras Times, August 16, 1898). Instead, Stevenson seems to have shifted his base of operations to Calcutta, where he completed his transformation from a photographic equipment dealer to a traveling showman in adopting the title of “Professor.” This title was at the time commonly used by traveling showmen on the variety entertainment circuit to lend an air of scientific legitimacy to their performances. Magicians, who, thus, inflected the mystery of their magic with modern science, used the “Professor” status most extensively. In Calcutta, the newly designated Professor Stevenson has been credited with introducing the “first-ever film show” in 1898 and assisting the Bengali film pioneer Hiralal Sen to make his first film (Garga, 1996, p. 12; Rajadhyaksha & Willemen, 1999, p. 210).

Miss Ada Delroy’s Company

In the previous section, I argued that Stevenson and Crowden’s last shows in December 1897 marked an important official recognition of cinema within the social hierarchy of European entertainment in Chennai. But more than merely being a milestone of local cinema, these shows were also part of a busy season of cultural events for the Europeans of Madras. Stevenson and Crowden’s film shows started what was considered to be an unusual glut of European entertainment for the city, which one newspaper reviewer described:

After a prolonged period of dullness and inertia Madras has suddenly become a center of unusual activity in the way of amusement—concerts, cinematographs, dramatic recitals, theatrical performances, and variety entertainments, to say nothing of regattas and Scottish dinners, tread closely on the heels of one another. (Madras Mail, December 8, 1897)

Amongst all these events the traveling variety entertainment of Miss Ada Delroy and her company of English and Australian artistes who performed over three nights at the Victoria Public Hall provided one of the highlights of the season (see Image 6). Miss Ada Delroy’s Company arrived from Colombo after a successful run there on their way from Australia to London as part of their third world tour. They proclaimed themselves with typical hyperbole to be “the most important amusement event ever introduced

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Downloaded from bio.sagepub.com at Tehran University on December 2, 2010 When Film Came to Madras 163 to Madras.” Delroy was billed as a “gifted burlesque [satirical] and terpsichorean artiste,” who specialized in skirt dances after the fashion of L’oie Fuller. But what made this touring show unique was that it was the first to visit Madras with its own film show integrated into their variety performances—an exhibition pattern that continued sporadically in the 1910s.

Image 6. Madras Times, December 11, 1897, p 1. Source: Author’s personal collection.

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The Ada Delroy Company was the first film show other than Stevenson and Crowden to appear in Madras. They offered another new and different motion picture technology—the first exhibition of what they advertised as the “Original no. 1 Lumière Cinematographe, compared to which all others are but mere toys” (Madras Times, December 8, 1897). And arriving just days after Stevenson and Crowden, the management of the Ada Delroy Company was explicit in offering a distinct cinematic alternative for Madras audiences. In subsequent advertising they went even further in publicizing their machine as “the only authentic Lumière in India.” This claim is credible since after Sestier left India there are no other official Lumière representatives known to have visited India. The Ada Delroy Company purchased their cinematograph machine for a cost of £900 (ibid.) at a time when they would have been amongst the first non-Lumière commercial operators outside of Europe to acquire the equipment. They prominently advertised a collection of “200 animated pictures including a series of views of the Melbourne Cup of 1896, the Diamond Jubilee Procession and other interesting subjects of home, colonial, and foreign life” (Madras Times, December 11, 1897).18 One local reviewer compared them with Stevenson and Crow- den’s films: “The pictures in the cinematograph were not so large as those recently exhibited in Madras, but were if anything, clearer and they were certainly a most interesting and effective selection” (Madras Times, December 15, 1897). However, the same reviewer also complained several days later they were run too fast; “Besides increasing the flickering this spoils the effect of the picture terribly, for instance in the processional pieces the horses were walking at the rate of 25 or 30 miles an hour” (Madras Times, December 17, 1897). But then again films were only a small part of the Ada Delroy show. Out of a full program of variety entertainment lasting around two hours, only 15 minutes were devoted to the screening of films. Newspaper reviews suggest that Ada Delroy Company’s film screenings were, to a large extent, upstaged by the innovative use of electricity at the Victoria Public Hall. The main talking point of the show was that, for the first time, electric power had been used at a public event in Madras. The company had brought along their own 2,000 candle-power arc light lamps, but were disappointed that the Victoria Public Hall was not wired for electricity and relied solely upon “smelly and smoky kerosene oil lamps.” When the manager saw that the electric tram passed on the road in front of the hall, he decided to make arrangements for a tempo- rary electrical connection. The installation was carried out by the Engineer-in-Chief of the Madras Tram- way Company, R. C. Holness, who ran a wire from the electric tramlines running on poles above Poonamalee High Road into the hall and attached it to “a great globe” hung in the middle of the ceiling. This provision of electric light attracted special editorial comment in the Madras Mail without any mention of the live performance or the first appearance of the Lumière cinematograph in Madras. The editorial heralded this spontaneous and novel use of electric lighting as an important example of an improved public amenity that should be actively promoted by the Madras Corporation (Madras Times, December 18, 1897). With two different film shows performed within a span of one week in December 1897, the cinema had definitely arrived in Madras. However, the motion pictures had not yet made its own place—either as a technology or as an entertainment—within the social networks and institutional settings of colonial Madras. Insofar as this early transient cinema was integrated into the social life of Madras, it was always part of something else, another kind of entertainment packaged along with a cluster of other technological innovations. And because cinema had yet to be articulated as a thing in itself and always appeared within borrowed institutional settings along with a variety of other attractions, it is not possible to disentangle the history of early cinema from other European social and cultural practices in colonial Madras. The historiography of early cinema in India is greatly complicated by the obligatory itinerancy of its practitioners. During the first decade of cinema, Madras was only one stop, most typically after Colombo

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Downloaded from bio.sagepub.com at Tehran University on December 2, 2010 When Film Came to Madras 165 and before Bangalore, along a vast network that linked Europe and the US with Australia and East Asia. Constantly on the move, early cinema presents a moving target that has, for the most part, completely eluded historians. This movement has made it difficult for scholars to document what were only fleeting engagements. At any given venue, it appeared with little warning and then disappeared after a short interval on an uncertain journey. For the most part, outsiders who did not have extensive local networks were responsible for organizing the earliest film shows in India.19 Nor did these traveling companies stay long enough or come often enough to create long-term or everyday relationships with local audiences. And because these early traveling shows did not leave any lasting institutional or material traces they also quickly passed out of memory without earning recognition as part of local history. For example, by the time that the Indian Cinematograph Committee visited Madras in 1928, no one was able to say much, if anything at all, about the first decades of cinema in the city (Government of India, 1928). The early history of cinema will continue to elude scholars, if we are not able to locate this early screen practice as part of larger mobile trajectories.

Notes

1. See for example, Bhowmik, 1991; Erik Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy, 1980, p. 1; or Firoze Rangoonwalla, 1975, p. 9. 2. Madras Mail, July 9, 1896. 3. For a general critique of “the search for origins,” see Michel Foucault (1977). Also, for a critique of starting points in relation to the history of the cinema, see Charles Musser (1984, 1990, pp. 15–54). 4. There is now considerable scholarship on the relationships between moving pictures and a variety of antecedent entertainment forms. See Charles Musser (1984); John L. Fell (1987); Miriam Hansen (1991); Nicholas Vardac (1949); and Robert C. Allen (1980). 5. Ananda Coomaraswamy lamented the prominence of these European entertainments in Madras. He feared that these attractions were luring Indians away from the traditional Indian arts (Coomaraswamy, 1909, p. 185). 6. The entire plant was manufactured by Savage and Company of Kings Lynn, England, who were leading innova- tors for a whole range of steam powered amusement rides in the late nineteenth century (Braithwaite, 1978). 7. As far as I have been able to ascertain, Eaves’ show is the only evidence of a kinetoscope in Madras. Further- more, there is absolutely no reference to the kinetoscope in any of the literature on the early history of cinema in India. 8. See Christie (2001) and Gunning (2001) on the connections between the phonograph and early cinema, and Charles Musser (2004) for a discussion of the early kinetoscope films. 9. There have recently been several documentaries made about some of the surviving bioscopewallahs in India that have gained wide spread publicity. See Prashant Kadam’s film shot in Poona, The Bioscopewallah (Kadam, 2006, 13 mins) and Tim Sternberg and Francisco Bello’s award winning Kolkata based film, Salim Baba (Steinberg & Bello, 2007, 15 mins). Both films attest to the continuing viability of this simple, small scale, yet widespread mode of film exhibition, which has somehow thrived for over a century, well below the radar of the Indian film industry and its scholars. See also Sudhir Mahadevan (2010) in BioScope, 1(1). 10. Madras Mail, December 8, 1896. It is standard to attribute the first moving picture show in Madras to an American exhibitor, M. Edwards, who visited the city for a short engagement at the Victoria Public Hall during 1897 (Baskaran, 1980, p. 61). But no source has been cited for this information. And though I have carefully searched newspaper records, I have not been able to verify any of the details of the account. I now believe this attribution to be erroneous.

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11. Magic Lantern, especially in Europe, was an important context for understanding the early culture of cinema. For more on this argument, see Rossell (1998a, 1998b). 12. At this early stage, films did not have main titles, but were identified by descriptions that varied and changed. So when a film was described as “a train arriving at a station” it could refer to any number of similar films. 13. The taking of pledges here refers to having a drink at the attached bar. 14. The Diamond Jubilee Celebrations were in many respects comparable to the Durbar coronation celebrations (see Cohn, 1983), except that they were staged through local community involvement in Madras, instead of sending symbolic representatives to Delhi. Also for another local variant, see Douglas Haynes (1990). 15. For example, on September 1, 1896, the Rev. Aurthur Acheson-Williams gave a magic lantern exhibition at the Royapettah Free Reading Room featuring some “some very pretty dissolving views of the principle sights of London, making appropriate and explanatory remarks regarding each” (Madras Mail, September 2, 1896). 16. See MacKenzie (1986) for a more general discussion of how imperialism related to forms of popular culture in Britain at the time. 17. This was the first colored film to be screened in Madras. The Madras Mail reported that, “The coloring was done by Mr Stevenson and redounds to his credit for the photographs are less than an inch square, while the figure of the dancer is perhaps half that size” (September 1, 1897). I doubt that Stevenson did the tinting himself, but being a professional in the photographic business, this would have been easily done within his technical abilities. The film seems to have been the Lumière version, which was very similar in style to the popular Edi- son film of Annabelle Whitford’s serpentine dance (Musser, 1991, pp. 41–42). The Lumière film can be viewed at the Internet Archives: http://www.archive.org/details/VueLumiere765DanseSerpentine (Accessed on March 5, 2009). 18. Undoubtedly, the Melbourne Cup films were the first shot by Marius Sestier upon his arrival to Australia. 19. On this point, Stevenson seems to be the notable exception, even though it is difficult to know how much time he had spent in Madras before his first film screenings.

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