Reel Pleasures. Laura Fair
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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 capital outlays used to build and equip a theater typically took twenty-five to thirty years.104 Gross receipts from ticket sales were indeed laudable, but after subtracting what was owed to distributors, plus mortgage or investor capital repayments and operating costs, exhibitors were left with relatively little. The operator of the Raha Leo Civic Center in Zanzibar claimed gross earnings of some TSh 81,614 (roughly $12,000) in 1951, which was certainly not bad for a second-run cinema on the poorer side of town. But more than three-fourths of this amount went to covering the basic costs of doing business.105 After costs, the average net to exhibitors was less than ten cents on every dollar earned at the box office.106 Nonetheless, relative to exhibitors in the United States, where average earnings were a mere 3.5 percent of the gross, East Africans did comparatively well.107 Across the globe, exhibition was without doubt penny capitalism.
Taxes, fees, and the day-to-day operating costs associated with running a cinema were also quite substantial. A typical cinema might have ten or more employees. Their combined salaries were the largest monthly expenditure, often amounting to 50 percent more than the owner stood to earn as profit.108 Cinema owners also incurred substantial costs for machinery and building maintenance, as well as electricity, water, and municipal taxes. And then there were expenses particular to this industry, such as fees charged by the government to cover the costs of censorship. Exhibitors complained about other costs associated with censorship as well, for members of the censorship board commonly expected free admission for themselves and their families—and of course they wanted prime seats. In Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar, where the main censorship boards were based, the cost in terms of lost sales could be substantial.109 In addition, there were annual fees for a municipal business license and permit fees for each film, short, and trailer. During the colonial era, the government found it too cumbersome to impose taxes on profits, preferring the simpler method of charging flat-rate licensing fees for businesses and charging cinemas fees on each film they screened. In Zanzibar, these fees were the highest in the region, amounting to $1,000 per year per theater in 1952 (or roughly $10,000 in today’s dollars).110 Exhibitors were also obliged by distributors to pay the freight costs for shipping the films on to the next theater in the circuit; these costs varied considerably depending on how far one had to ship the films, as well as the relative ease of getting them from point A to point B. Other costs of doing business were more typical: accountancy fees, telephone charges, postage, bank fees, and advertising costs. When all was said and done at the end of the month, an exhibitor would be left with very little to show in terms of financial profit. In small up-country towns or in theaters in Pemba, exhibitors frequently had to borrow money—from another self-owned business or a friend—to keep the cinema afloat, particularly if they were faced with sudden, unanticipated costs related to expensive repairs.
The distribution industry was increasingly consolidated in the late 1950s, and for East African exhibitors, this meant that the share of the gross they retained declined. Hollywood distributors paved the way. First, they began opening regional offices across the continent, including in Nairobi, to improve their knowledge of and control over African markets. In 1956, Schlesinger also sold his distribution company, African Consolidated Films, to 20th Century Fox, leading to a monopoly that even by South African corporate standards seemed excessive.111 The new organization, known as Anglo-American Film Corporation, moved agents to Nairobi to cover its East African territories. By the 1960s, rental terms for East African exhibitors rose to 70 percent of box office earnings for Hollywood films. Following suit, distributors of Indian films—beginning with international firms based in Nairobi—also raised their rates. By the mid-1960s, the previous fifty-fifty split of returns had changed to seventy-thirty in favor of the distributor in most cases. Nationalization of the distribution industries in Kenya and Tanzania in the late 1960s further transformed business relations. Patron and client give-and-take over films, terms, and scheduling was replaced by a new business model in which the state was the dominant partner. Terms were offered, and one could take them or leave them, but that was the end of the official discussion. These transformations are discussed at length in chapter 8.
The monetary rewards from running a cinema may have been limited, but the social capital earned was priceless. Cinemas were centers of urban social and cultural life, yielding returns for proprietors and townspeople that were beyond measure if calculated in good times and in people connecting with people.
Chapter 2
THE MEN WHO MADE THE MOVIES RUN
OWNERS WERE not the only ones who accrued social capital from their connections to film. Cinemas were vibrant urban institutions made all the more dynamic by the often larger-than-life characters who brought the shows to life. Managers, ticket sellers, projectionists, and concession stand operators made the buildings hum, and reelers, human billboards, and black market sellers of cinema tickets—occupational categories that were somewhat unique to this part of the cinematic world—added local flare. Entire neighborhoods were known by the cinemas in their midst, and the men from a range of class and ethnic backgrounds who worked at these theaters were regarded by many as local stars. These men drew immense pride from their ties to the cinema and their ability to bring fantasy, drama, and pleasure to others’ lives. Sociability, commitment to community, professionalism, and pride in a job well done were hallmarks of being a good man in early twentieth-century East Africa. And working at a cinema or simply being affiliated in a tangential way allowed men to demonstrate these qualities before a large and appreciative audience.
It was the people who brought the buildings to life, not those who built and endowed them, who held the warmest spots in communal hearts. Their names were known by everybody in town. As one man said of his father, who worked as an usher at the Empire Cinema in Zanzibar in the 1950s, “Everyone knew [him]. If you walked with him you were constantly being greeted, ‘Eh Amir, how are you today? How is the family?’ Cinema was highly valued, so if you worked at the cinema you were popular and people respected you.”1 Many residents could also tell you where cinema workers lived and who their relatives were. Being able to situate these men within the elaborate nexus of the crosscutting social networks of urban life meant that one was better able to connect to power should the need arise for an extra ticket to a sold-out show or should young kids with no money hope to gain entrance by pressuring an “uncle” who worked at the theater to let them in for free.2 But it was not merely the power they exercised over goods in limited supply that brought them prestige: these men were loved because they gave the town a good time. Their charming smiles, twinkling eyes, and willingness