Talk:Bombay Talkies

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 17:32, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Recent additions
Some entries in the new Bombay Talkies film list are surprising. Where does this list come from?


 * Does this list include unfinished or just planned movies? For instance, is the movie called Indian Lady the same as Narayani which was cancelled in September 1940 and never released?


 * Some entries like Buddha or Lahore To Calcutta are also very intriguing. They would be the only films not directed by Franz Osten while Himansu Rai was Bombay Talkies director. And those films do not appear in any list (IMDB, Wikipedia, NFAI etc.). Do they really exist? Maybe they are short films like Mamta and Miyaa Biwi...


 * The recent addition of Krishna And Panju as co-director of Bhabhi is puzzling.


 * Needless to say that it would be great news to learn that Shobhna Samarth worked at the same time for Hindustan Cinetone and Bombay Talkies.


 * Charlie really made Bombay Talkies movies while he was in Pakistan?


 * Finally, there is an obvious error with Prem Sanyas and Karma which were released before the studio was established in 1934.

The story about Himansu Rai suicide attempt needs sourcing as it is difficult to imagine. Thinking about it, the full story with Rajnarayan Dube is difficult to believe. The doubt raises when we realize that the full Legacy paragraph is a copy of this page.

One last detail: why put a picture of Najmul Hussein in the new Bombay Talkies logo? MelAntipam (talk) 03:25, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Errors in the current version
I'm under the impression that there are some errors in the current (01/26/2016) version of this page which is very sad for such an iconic studio:

Studio filmography
I had a chance to look at it more carefully. Out of the 102 entries in this list:
 * 40 are rightfully referenced (NFAI, Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, gomolo.com etc.) as Bombay Talkies movies.
 * 19 films are clearly referenced as having being produced by other studios (Ranjit Cinetone, Minerva Movietone etc.).
 * I could not find any reference to the last 43, except that about 15 of them are not Bombay Talkies movies for various serious reasons (Charlie in Pakistan, films that don't appear in very famous artist filmography, contractual relations with artists etc.). A last comment on these 43: it's very surprising not to find anything on them. My guess is that they simply don't exist.

The current filmography is then awfully wrong. The previous one was accurate and required only a few additions.

MelAntipam (talk) 17:22, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Rajnarayan Dube and Bombay Talkies
I could not find any independent source on this man. I want to believe he did exist since apparently he had a grandson, but I've not seen any reference to him. He has a page on Wikipedia, but without any independent source either... Then comes his relation with Himansu Rai and his implication in Bombay Talkies: no book, no article, no scholar, no academic research, confirms the story currently described in the page. If those references exist, I want to see them. Because for now, this tale is extremely difficult to believe.

MelAntipam (talk) 17:22, 26 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree with this assessment. I tried searching for the name "Raj Narayan Dube" in pre-2010 sources, but couldn't find anything.
 * This article from 2013 mentions that "the idea to revive the production house took shape three years ago" i.e. in 2010. That year, the name "Raj Narayan Dube" was added to the Bombay Talkies article on Wikipedia, by an anon, without any source. In 2015, a new article on Raj Narayan Dube was created. Recently, the article Bombay Talkies was re-written using these sources, by, who claims to the Digital Head of the new company.
 * Before 2010, there is no mention of "Raj Narayan Dube" in any source at all, which seems quite fishy. The recent re-write appears to be a PR job. utcursch &#124; talk 19:44, 26 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Noted with thanks, the details mentioned here are satisfactory enough to delete the mentioned name, thank you for mentioning here in details.--Piyushratnu (talk) 10:22, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

"The Bombay Talkies Limited" and "The Bombay Talkies Studio"
Apparently The Bombay Talkies Limited (the original company) is still under liquidation and has not been recently sold (I'm no expert but there seems to be still a legal dispute). The venerable studio is not listed anymore but has not completely disappeared.

Now what is The Bombay Talkies Studio? Is it a company? Registered where/when? What right does this company have to say it is the successor of the original iconic studio? Why deface the original logo that appeared in the opening credits of Basant (1942) as a tribute to the (sole) company founder (just in case, there is another tribute in Mahal (1949))? Maybe Mr. Kumar has all the rights and many references exist somewhere to justify a filiation between the two companies. They have to be presented in the article otherwise the text looks like a very bad taste publicity for an upcoming film.

MelAntipam (talk) 17:22, 26 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Agree with this too. This isn't the first PR job about the supposed "revival" of a famous company. In 2010, an NRI established "East India Company Fine Foods", and Indian media went ga-ga over the claim that "East India Company now has an Indian owner").
 * The old Bombay Talkies and the new company are two completely different entities. I'll go ahead and undo the recent edits., claims to the Digital Head of the new company, and has an obvious conflict of interest here. utcursch &#124; talk 19:51, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I've found the incorporation dates of the Dube studio on the official Indian site: June 20th 2015. No official mention of Dube Industries (Indian official company records seem to go back to the 19th century), but this company is in the Indian yellow pages. It looks very small and has the same chairman than the Studio. Lastly, I've also tried to fix the text. Sorry for my poor English. It was not my initial intention to modify English pages but I couldn't just remove text. MelAntipam (talk) 02:27, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've been fooled too on the French Himansu Rai wiki page (cleaned-up now). I've updated the filmography. References exist for all 40 movies. There may be scholar disputes over a few propaganda films made during the war (if any), or about the very obscure short talkie Melody and Rhythm made in Malad in 1934. But basically, I think the list should be now complete. Interestingly, whenever the number of 102 films arises, the Dube story is not very far.

Is there a source?
I looked again very carefully today and could not find (again) any source that could prove a connection between Raj Narayan Dube and Bombay Talkies, or any other Indian studio of this era. I could not find a single citation in any book or any encyclopedia related to Indian cinema.

But maybe researchers have missed something. Let's go back to the source. One of the best we have is Filmindia because Barburao Patel was accurate when it came to facts (his film critics, taste or political views are another matter). The issue on Himansu Rai's death is publicly available here. Patel lists personalities that attended Rai's funerals. No Dube. He states clearly that Rai was the sole founder of Bombay Talkies without mentioning anybody else. He names the two other important persons in building Bombay Talkies: Devika Rani and R.B. Chunilall. No Dube. On the previous pages, there are many pictures. We can see for instance Richard Temple, an ex-Viceroy, the governor of Bombay etc. No Dube. Along the hundreds of publicly available Filmindia pages, between 1937 and 1949, Patel gives numerous details on what happened at Bombay Talkies and in other studios. Raj Narayan Dube is never mentioned anywhere. Dube is also not credited in any of the hundreds of movie ads. If he was that « pillar of Indian cinema », his name should have been cited at least once.

Usually, when discussing notability on Wikipedia, there is at least something: a small article in a local newspaper, a credit somewhere, a word in an interview. In Raj Narayan Dube's case, nothing!

What source do we have?
The sole source we have on this man is a website: rajanarayandube.com and its predecessor bombaytalkies.net.in. The story was developed there and propagated to interviews, some blogs, and Wikipedia, sometimes with small variations. Interestingly, the story has evolved over the years. For instance at the beginning, Dube gave 41 Lakhs rupees to Himansu Rai. But recently, it's only 25. In 2011, Dube and Devika Rani decided together to close the studio in 1954. In the latest version, it's Dube's sole decision (the author of this hoax does not know that the company had been sold twice before having its activities stopped). In the 2011 version, Dube discovered Dilip Kumar (along with Devika Rani), but in latest one, this interesting story has disappeared. In the same vein, Dube's mother choose Bombay Talkies name only since 2014. Same for Madhubala's name which was chosen by Dube only in 2014. In interviews, Abhay Kumar, the grandson of Rajnarayan Dube, sometimes improvises: his grand-dad would have slapped the naughty Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor to teach them lessons.

Anyway, it's clear from the text that the author of this nonsense has no idea of Bombay Talkies economics during the war. The studio's financial health was good thanks to successful movies. The studio, which was listed at that time, was in any way in need of such a ridiculous amount of 4.1 Lakh rupees (it's roughly 5 weeks of the studio revenue share in a single cinema in 1944). He does not know either that the 3.5 years run of Kismet was only in a single cinema in Calcutta. It was not the case elsewhere. In Madras, Benares or Allahabad for instance, Kismet lasted 25 weeks. Finally, because the list is long, he has no clue on the number of cinemas in India at that time. There was only 1000 movie theaters in 1940. How could somebody have build 400 cinemas without making the headlines?

My conclusion: this source, the only one we have, is absolute crap!

But did the man really exist?
Interestingly, there are two reasons to answer no:
 * 1) The picture of the young Dube on the top of rajnarayandube.com site is a photoshoped version of a bigger picture here. The caption says: « Abhay with his grandfather ». Well, the man is supposed to be born in 1910 (BTW funny to have chosen 10/10/10 as a birth date) and looking at him, he looks like being in his late 20's. So this picture was taken around 1935/1940. How old is Abhay? He must be 80 by now... He does not look so old at the bottom of the same page (his wikipedia picture has just been deleted by commons). Ok, lets assume that this magazine (and also the BBC) has made a mistake. The little boy is not Abhay but his father, being born around 1935 (80 years ago). How old is Abhay? 50? Does not fit either! Who's that man on the picture? If he's Raj Narayan Dube born 106 years ago, Abhay is not his grand-son... and vice-versa.
 * 2) We have 3 more recent pictures of Raj Narayan Dube : in the infamous logo here and two others here. Looking very closely at these pictures, there is something striking: it's exactly the same head! The picture of somebody was taken, and using Photoshop or something, his head has been put on 3 different bodies (the black mustache was obviously added). Why do that? There is only one possible reason: no other picture was available. How come a major business tycoon could not have been photographed? Well, maybe he was hiding. But at least his family must have pictures. Or... or no picture is available because the man did not exist.

In the Filmindia pictures discussed above, we have very important personalities clicked on numerous occasion with Himansu Rai. How does it compare with the ridicule Photoshoped pictures of Dube? And Dube is supposed to have been the pillar of Indian cinema? Crap!

Conclusion
In any case, from whatever angle I look at it, the Raj Narayan Dube, Pillar of the Indian Cinema, story is a hoax. It was included in Wikipedia solely to help an upcoming movie.

Thinking about it, since the story is false then the grand-father is not notable, then there is nothing that makes the grandson notable. Then why the movie (which was said to be released 2 years ago) has a Wikipedia page?.

(In my opinion, the simple fact that somebody was paid to insert purposely a hoax in Wikipedia disqualifies everything he has written or will ever write)

But let's be fair, Abhay Kumar must have had a grand-father. Who was he? I think that the short comment by Guest in this page is probably true. Raj Narayan Dube was the owner of a small shop in Mumbai. Maybe this one. MelAntipam (talk) 02:54, 28 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I've proposed deletion of the articles Raj Narayan Dube, Abhay Kumar (director), and Gandhi vs Aazaad. Will take these to WP:AfD, if needed. utcursch &#124; talk 03:07, 28 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The proposed deletion tag on Raj Narayan Dube was removed by someone who wanted to get it speedy deleted (declined). So, I've taken it to AfD: Articles for deletion/Raj Narayan Dube. utcursch &#124; talk 20:39, 2 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Noted with thanks. --Piyushratnu (talk) 10:20, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I completely agree that this whole thing is a bad joke and a hoax. I have a huge collection of books, magazines, newspaper articles from the 30s and 40s. There is absolutely no mention of thus guy anywhere at all. I would recommend mercilessly purging him from here. Surjit Singh (talk) 18:25, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

SPAs
A host of single-purpose accounts have been trying to re-insert the Raj Narayan Dube bit since the past few days:



If this continues, I'll start a sock-puppet investigation. I hope these are not your PR folks. utcursch &#124; talk 18:22, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Wow, within hours of posting this, I've started receiving off-wiki messages like "ur mother is hoar", "u born in cowdung" etc. Keep it classy, folks. utcursch &#124; talk 01:50, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * This indicates that some Wikipedians have not matured over the years since I started editing 11 years before and still funny things are happening here to the detriment to collective efforts of serious volunteer editors. --Bhadani (talk) 01:43, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

OK, the off-wiki harassment has gone a little too far in the past few days. These PR spammers are now creating SEO spam pages accusing me of black-mailing their company (here's an example).


 * In your edit summaries, you have stated that Abhay Kumar is your client, and that you're the digital head of his company. Please do acknowledge that you or your team are not involved in this off-wiki harassment campaign against me.


 * I have no association with this page nor this company. I am 100% sure my ip address is not associated with this page anymore. SO please dont involve me in this, as i will never do something like this. I was new to wikipedia and thus made those changes, the moment u made the edits, i never made any changes.You can check in the section.I am trying to contribute more and more towards wiki.So kindly requesting you to keep me away from this.Thank You and best regards

I edit Wikipedia under my real name, so I'm not going to take this lightly. If I feel that my personal safety or reputation is in danger, I'll be approaching cyber police. utcursch &#124; talk 15:14, 13 June 2016 (UTC)