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Abstract
In the 1930s, as literature and films representing the British empire were disseminated in Britain, the United States and colonial India, the narratives were transformed through reception and adaptation. The genre of pro-imperial or ‘empire films’ produced by British studios celebrated the continued international relevance of the British empire at a time of contestation by nationalist movements. American film adaptations of imperial narratives from the same period promoted an image of the United States as a global economic power even as Hollywood was confronted internationally with accusations of cultural imperialism and restrictive quotas to limit the number of American film imports. In colonial India, the empire films became a lightning rod for criticism about the misrepresentation of South Asia and a force against which filmmakers, journalists and industry representatives sought to articulate the values of a burgeoning national industry. Studying imperial narratives as they were created and circulated illuminates the transnational construction of cultural identity in the age of early sound cinema, whose technologies heightened awareness of linguistic and national divisions.
Notes
1. Chowdhry, Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema, 2. Among the 15 top grossing films in the United States in the year of their release were The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1934), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1938), Wee Willie Winkie (1937), The Drum (1938), and Gunga Din (1939), which were all American empire films except for The Drum, which was produced in Britain.
2. Indian Cinematograph Committee, Report of the Indian Cinematograph Committee: 1927–1928, 179–82.
3. Thompson, Exporting Entertainment, 144, 220.
4. Richards, ‘Boy's Own Empire’, 146. Successful British empire films include Zoltan Korda's Sanders of the River (1935), Henry Hathaway's Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1934) and Michael Balcon's Rhodes of Africa (1936), and The Great Barrier (1936).
5. Richards, ‘Boy's Own Empire’.
6. Chowdhry, Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema, 62.
7. Jaikumar, Cinema at the End of Empire, 26.
8. Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, 119.
9. The Drum. Director Zoltan Korda with Sabu, Raymond Massey, Roger Livesey, Valerie Hobson, 1938.
10. Jaikumar, Cinema at the End of Empire, 155.
11. Sabu appeared in a number of Korda films including Elephant Boy (1937), The Drum (1938), and The Jungle Book (1942). In each case, he plays the role of mediator. In Elephant Boy, Sabu plays the orphaned son of a mahout or elephant trainer who is adopted by an Englishman on a project of rounding up wild elephants for the government. He discovers a herd of wild elephants, the largest ever seen and ultimately leads the British to them.
12. Kulik, Alexander Korda, 135.
13. 21 ‘Drum Arrests’. The Bombay Chronicle, September 14, 1938.
14. ‘Change Personnel of Film Censor Board’. The Bombay Chronicle, September 13, 1938.
15. ‘ “The Drum” ’. The Bombay Chronicle, September 8, 1938.
16. ‘ “The Drum” ’. The Bombay Chronicle, September 10, 1938.
17. ‘ “The Drum” ’. The Bombay Chronicle, September 13, 1938.
18. Richards, Imperialism and Music, 293. Jeffrey Richards writes the following: ‘Hollywood acquired the rights to the Kipling poem in 1936 and scriptwriters Ben Hecht and Charles Macarthur, working with director Howard Hawks, put together a script that blended the story of the heroic self-sacrifice of the regimental water-carrier Gunga Din with Kipling's concept of the Soldiers three, Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd, the archetypal Indian army privates, and added for good measure from the hit Hecht-Macarthur newspaper play The Front Page the running theme of a man trying to prevent his best friend from getting married and deserting his profession.’
19. Kipling, Barrack-Room Ballads, 33.
20. Ibid., 37.
21. ‘Rudyard Kipling and RKO Bring a Spectacular Version’, The New York Times, January 27, 1939. ‘Though the picture draws heavily on the Ballads for atmosphere and inspiration, and doesn't scruple to use Kipling himself, the brilliantly talented young war correspondent, as a minor character (it seems he dashed off the famous poem in time for the Commandant to read it over the water-carrier's grave), the only historical or literary authority for it seems to have been an original story by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.’
22. ‘Gaumont’, Queen.
23. ‘RKO Show News’, issued by RKO Radio Pictures.
24. Abbas, ‘Self-Respecting Indians Must Ban “Gunga Din” ’.
25. ‘Gungadin’. The Bombay Chronicle, April 19, 1939.
26. Newspaper article source unknown from ‘Publicity clips’ 2618.
27. Stevens, ‘Q and A in Screen and Radio Weekly’.
28. Maltby and Vasey, ‘Temporary American Citizens’, 68–93.
29. Cinematograph Films Act 1927.
30. Thompson, Exporting Entertainment, 211–2.
31. Maltby and Vasey, ‘Temporary American Citizens’, 49.
32. Higson and Maltby, ‘Film Europe’ and ‘Film America’, 9.
33. Vincendeau, ‘Hollywood Babel’, 34. This involved the reproduction of films with a new cast and crew in the foreign language. Ginette Vincendeau has written that ‘the criticism of MLVs always went hand in hand with a phobia of the cinema in its industrial as opposed to its artistic dimension’.
34. Ďurovičová, ‘Translating America’, 152.
35. The Community and the Motion Picture, 31–2.
36. Ibid., 33.
37. Copy of Minutes written in Department of Overseas Trade, IOR L/P&J/8/130. This argument was widely disseminated.
38. Street, Transatlantic Crossings, 63–4. Street writes of Americans’ fascination with the ‘patterns of chivalry’ associated with empire, which emphasize ‘good manners, thoughtfulness, bravery, and modesty in such a way that the basis of their power—domination and conquest is underplayed’.
39. Kipling, Under the Deodars, 237–50.
40. Ibid., 242.
41. Ibid., 247.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., 250.
44. Ibid.
45. Wee Willie Winkie, Director John Ford, with Shirley Temple, Victor McLaglen, C. Aubrey Smith, June Lang, 1937.
46. Govil, ‘Anti-Indian Film Propaganda in America’.
47. ‘Tell us another Sir Reginald!’. Filmindia 5.4 (April 1939). In this article, a host of pictures are listed as ‘anti-Indian, including The Drum, The Siege of Lucknow, The Black Hole of Calcutta, The Rains Came, The Tiger of Eschnapur, and Gunga Din’. Filmindia 5.1 (January 1939). ‘Filmindia's’ Agitation Against Anti Indian Pictures Vindicated in the House of Commons’.
48. Bromfield, Rains Came, 105.
49. Ibid., 34.
50. Nugent, ‘With the Merest Nod to Louis Bromfield’, The New York Times, September 9, 1939.
51. “Rains Came”, Variety, September 7, 1939.
52. Breen to Selznick, December 10, 1937. Note the following critiques of the film: ‘Unacceptable by reason of the great amount of illicit sex and adultery which it contains. The indication that Lady Edwina had been Tom's mistress, as well as the mistress of numerous other men. The indication on page 4 that she and Tom commit adultery. The indication, on the same page, that the girl Fern, offers herself to Tom. The indication on Page 5 that the girl's mother, Mrs Simon, secretly condones her daughter's act. The indication on Page 6 that Lady Edwina attempts to seduce Major Safti. The veiled suggestion, on Page 7, that Fern and Tom indulge in an illicit sex affair.’
53. Breen to Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. February 9, 1940. ‘Deleted Reel 11 (Scene 35–9): This consists of the scene where Major Safti takes Lady Esketh in his arms and holds her closely. The Censor insisted upon this cut due to difference in color.’
54. Breen, Letter to Col. Jason S. Joy.
55. “The Drum”, The Bombay Chronicle, September 10, 1938.
56. ‘ “Filmindia's” Agitation Against Anti-Indian Pictures Vindicated in the House of Commons’, Filmindia, January, 1939.
57. Vasey, World According to Hollywood, 158–94. Although the market of the British empire was significant for studios, India was still a small market. The films were pro-British and continued to be released throughout the empire, including India, despite the controversy and official debate.
58. Deputy Secretary, Government of India to Secretary, Public and Judicial Department, India Office. A 1939 letter from the Deputy Secretary to the Government of India to the Secretary, Public and Judicial Department, India Office London lists ‘films to which objection is likely to be taken’. First on the list is ‘those which are based on episodes in British Indian history or stories in the Kipling tradition’.
59. Thompson, Exporting Entertainment, 220. Compare the 80% in 1930 to the 65% of the Indian market in 1934.
60. Second All-India Motion Picture Convention Presidential Address of Chimanlal B. Desai, 450. The presidential address of a 1936 trade meeting argued ‘Before the year 1913, there was hardly a theatre showing an Indian picture, whereas now we have over 450 theatres all over India showing Indian pictures exclusively amongst a total of over 650 theatres.’
61. ‘Editor's Desk’. Varieties, November 4, 1933.
62. ‘Ourselves’. Filmland, June 10, 1933.
63. Ghose, ‘Tiny Concerns of India’. Filmland.
64. Turkhud, ‘Society Ladies for the Indian Screen’. Filmland, 1932.
65. ‘Ourselves’. Filmland, June 10, 1933.
66. ‘Film in National Propaganda’. The Mirror, July 11, 1939.
67. Sircar, ‘The Art of Film Direction’. Varieties, September 9, 1933. Sircar wrote, ‘The mistake that almost every Indian director is making is that he imitates the westerners in their minutest detail.’