Once Upon a Cinema: A Tale of Two Brothers

Once Upon a Cinema is series which will illuminate the dark, unexplored crevices of Indian cinema. In it, the writer will showcase stories and faces long forgotten, share uncommon perspectives about stars and filmmakers, and recount tales that have never been told.

Dwarkadas Narendas Sampat had stumbled upon the business of filmmaking quite early on, and was fascinated by it. Around 1904 when he was 20 years old, Sampat bought a movie camera from the Edison Kaleidoscope Company and started exhibiting films on a makeshift screen. In 15 years, he was to join hands with Maniklal Patel and set up one of India’s first grand movie studios, the Kohinoor Film Company. Kohinoor produced a series of landmark silent films, including Bhakta Vidur (1921), Gul-E-Bakawali (1924) and Kala Naag (1924). Bhakta Vidur also turned out to be the first banned film in India, for its depiction of Gandhian symbols. The cinematographer of Bhakta Vidur and Kala Naag, G.S. Deware, set up a film processing lab within the compounds of Kohinoor. It came to be known as Deware Film Lab.

Two brothers, Jamshed and Homi Wadia, used to work in the film lab. Homi was a lab developer, and Jamshed had earlier worked with G.S. Deware on a film called Vasant Leela (1928). The Wadia brothers hailed from a ship-building family, and had shocked everyone when they chose to get into the film business. Jamshed had just witnessed Douglas Fairbanks on Mark of Zorro and Son of Zorro, and was quite taken in by the swashbuckling hero. Many young men used to hang around the Kohinoor studio complex, hoping to be noticed by a producer or two. As the brothers were working in the lab, one of the youngsters, Yeshwant Dave, claimed that he could do what Fairbanks did in Zorro. Give me a chance and I too can jump from rooftop to rooftop, like Zorro. The Wadia brothers were intrigued.

They decided to test the “skills” he so loudly propagated. In the compound, there were too tiled roofs jutting at a distance from each other. Yeshwant Dave, eager for a chance to prove himself, climbed onto one of the roofs. As the crowd below watched with bated breath, the young man hurled himself to the next roof. A few tiles smashed below and he had a few bruises, but Yeshwant had successfully jumped between the roofs like he claimed. It needs to be pointed out that stuntmen or CGI were not in vogue yet. Which is what made Fairbank’s and Dave’s feats so formidable. Jamshed and Homi Wadia launched a film called Dilair Daku (1931) and a camera was purchased for the purpose. They paid Kohinoor Rs.1000 for a Pathé camera, and Homi shot the film with it. He claimed to have directed, shot and edited the film. The villain was played by the brother of Baburao Pai, who co-founded Prabhat Film Company. The film was completed on a budget of ₹2000 and sold for ₹5000!

The journey of the Wadia Brothers had begun. For the next couple of years, all their films were lensed by Homi and directed by his brother Jamshed, who also came to be known as J.B.H. Wadia. And gradually, they found a way to specialise in films where the protagonist is shown to achieve acrobatic feats like jumping between buildings or running atop a moving train. These “stunts” were done by the lead performers themselves, and as such the films came to be known as stunt films. One of these early films was Toofan Mail (1932), in which a significant portion of the story unfolds on the roof of a moving train. The film starred the same Yeshwant Dave with whom the story began. This also foreshadows a long affair with the locomotive that the Wadia brothers manifested through their cinema. It led to films which had titles like Miss Frontier Mail (1936), Toofan Express (1938), Punjab Mail (1939), and Son of Toofan Mail (1947).

The brothers set up Wadia Movietone. And at this point walks in Nadia the Fearless, aka Hunterwaali. She was employed with Zarco Circus at the time. It was her daredevilry at the circus that attracted the Wadias’ attention, especially JBH. Though born as Mary Ann Evans, she had taken on the stage name Nadia for her circus job. JBH liked it, and added a sensational spin to it: Fearless Nadia! And that’s how she used to be credited as, in all her stunt films. The first slew of films with Nadia had regular walk-on parts for her. She worked on her Hindi/ Urdu in the meanwhile. It was in 1935 that the Wadias launched Fearless Nadia in Hunterwali. The “hunter” in the title alluded to the whip she carried. She was India’s first costumed superhero, her mask harking back to the one sported by Douglas Fairbanks in Mark of Zorro. In 1943, there was a sequel to the original Hunterwali called Hunterwali ki Beti, in which Nadia returned, but this time as the eponymous daughter.

Hunterwali consolidated Homi Wadia’s career as a director. It also solidified the stunt film as a genre in India. In that sense, Homi and JBH can be credited with pioneering action films in India. There were several films with Fearless Nadia in the lead, with her single handedly fighting whole gangs of men. Once she had to carry the actor Sadashiv, Bhagwan Dada’s brother, on her back while climbing on top of a train. Homi, the director of the film, kept hollering instructions to her, asking her to face the camera as Sadashiv, petrified, kept mumbling, “Humko mat chhodo!” While shooting another movie, she was in a cage with lions, and then one of them, a lioness, jumped toward her. Fearless Nadia felt the blood draining from her body when she realised that the poor beast had jumped above her head, and above Homi Wadia’s head, to run away from all the tomfoolery!

By the 1940s, the aura of Wadia Movietones was diminishing. Homi and JBH had a falling out, and Homi walked out over their creative differences. He formed a new studio called Basant Pictures. Nadia walked with him. Homi and Nadia continued to make films together. But what’s even more interesting is that the Wadia Brothers didn’t really stop working together. JBH would often supervise the editing of Homi’s films, while Homi continued to direct many of JBH Wadia’s productions. Wadia Movietones shut down and was bought over by V. Shantaram who established Rajkamal Kalamandir on its ruins. JBH branched out to making social dramas and love stories, but Homi stuck to his guns and continued to make stunt and mythological films under his banner Basant Pictures. In 1961, Nadia tied the knot with Homi Wadia.

JBH continued to make films till the 70s. It is said that due to a major labour dispute during the early 80s, Homi Wadia quit filmmaking in a huff and never held the megaphone again. The elder JBH Wadia passed away in 1986, while the younger Homi died at a ripe old age of 93, on 10 December 2004. Fearless Nadia bid adieu to the world in 1996. She was 88.

Amborish is a National Film Award winning writer, biographer and film historian.

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