Munshiram Varma (1902-1958) was a Bollywood film producer. He was one of six brothers that were founders/partners of
Varma Films, a company predominantly involved with the production and distribution of
Hindi
Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
-language films.
Family
Munshiram Varma was born as Munshiram Chawla in the
Punjab Province of
British India
The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...
. He was one of six sons born to Laxmidas and Hakumdai Chawla. The other five brothers were Ramrakha, Biharilal, Waltiram,
Bhagwan Das and Santram. After moving to
Bombay
Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial centre, financial capital and the list of cities i ...
to enter the movie industry, the six brothers changed their last name to Varma.
Involvement in the
Hindi language cinema was pursued by Munshiram as well as members of his immediate family. Madhu Makkar née Varma, daughter of Munshiram, played the female lead in
Insaaniyat (1974) opposite veteran actor
Shashi Kapoor. Surinder Makkar, spouse of Madhu Makkar and son-in-law of Munshiram, worked as a character actor in
''Insaaniyat''.
More participation in the film industry from the children of Munshiram came from his sons Sunil and Pammy (a.k.a. Rajesh). Sunil Varma was the executive producer of ''Insaaniyat''.
Pammy Varma, was the co-producer of
Mard (1985), which was the second highest-grossing film of 1985, and the eighth highest-grossing film of the 1980s (1980 to 1989). Furthermore, after years of working as the assistant director/second-unit director of
Manmohan Desai
Manmohan Desai (26 February 1937 – 1 March 1994) was an Indian film producer and director. He was one of the most successful filmmakers of the 70s and 80s. Desai was an influential and sought-after film director of Bollywood and a pioneer of ...
, leading director of the 1970s, Pammy Varma made his debut as the independent director of
Ek Misaal (1986).
Finally, a third generation of participation in the film industry comes from film and TV actors
Sid Makkar and
Giriraj Kabra
Giriraj Kabra is an Indian film and television actor, who has been active since 2008. After completing an acting course from the Roshan Taneja School of Acting in Mumbai, he made his debut as Balwinder Singh in the film ''Kirkit''. As a televi ...
. Sid Makkar is Munshiram's grandson and Giriraj Kabra is the spouse of Munshiram's granddaughter, Seher Kabra née Varma.
Additionally, Chandan Arora, the recipient of the
Filmfare Award for Best Editing, for the film
Company
A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of legal people, whether Natural person, natural, Juridical person, juridical or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members ...
(2002), which was eighth highest-grossing film of 2002, is married to Minal Arora, granddaughter of Munshiram Varma’s sister, Sumitra.
Film career
Munshiram Varma began his career in the Indian film industry by working jointly with
Kidar Sharma as a producer for the production company Oriental Pictures. The first film on which they worked together was
Suhaag Raat (1948). It was also in the year 1948 that Munshiram, together with his five brothers, founded
Varma Films and ''Suhaag Raat'' was the first film to be distributed by Varma Films.
It was a great way for Munshiram to begin his career in the film industry because ''Suhaag Raat'' was a box-office hit; it was the seventh highest-grossing film of 1948.
The decision to hire Munshiram as a producer of ''Suhaag Raat'' was influenced by the film’s director, Kidar Sharma, who had developed a reputation for being the person to reach out to when one wanted to get a break in the film industry.
For example, in 1947, the year before ''Suhag Raat'' was released, Kidar Sharma, as the producer of
Neel Kamal, is credited with starting the acting careers of veteran stars
Madhubala and
Raj Kapoor
Raj Kapoor (; born as Shrishti Nath Kapoor; 14 December 1924 2 June 1988; also known as Ranbir Raj Kapoor) was an Indian actor, film director and producer, who worked in Hindi cinema. He is considered to be one of the greatest and most influen ...
.
When Varma Films decided that the company would debut its entry into the film industry with distributing ''Suhaag Raat'',
Kidar Sharma took on Munshiram, a founding member of the company, as a co-producer of ''Suhaag Raat''.
Given the success of ''Suhaag Raat'', Oriental Pictures collaborated with Varma Films on two additional films,
Thes (1949) and
Neki Aur Badi (1949).
Like ''Suhaag Raat'', ''Thes'' was produced by Munshiram Varma and Kidar Sharma. To attempt to enhance the probability of commercial success, the producers of ''Thes'' not only used the same director, Kidar Sharma, of their recent hit film ''Suhaag Raat'', but also used other members of ''Suhaag Raat''’s ensemble in the film. Like in ''Suhaag Raat'', the lead male actor of ''Suhaag Raat'',
Bharat Bhushan
Bharatbhushan Gupta, better known as Bharat Bhushan (14 June 1920 – 27 January 1992) was an Indian actor in Hindi language films, scriptwriter and producer. He was born in Meerut, and brought up in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh.
Career 1941– ...
, played the lead role in ''Thes''. Further, the music of ''Thes'' was composed by
Snehal Bhatkar, the same person who had composed the music of ''Suhaag Raat''. Whereas ''Thes'' did not achieve the commercial success that ''Suhag Raat'' achieved,
Purnima
Pūrṇimā () is the word for full moon in Sanskrit. The day of Purnima is the day ('' Tithi'') in each month when the full moon occurs, and marks the division in each month between the two lunar fortnights (paksha), and the Moon is aligned exac ...
, one of the film’s leading who would go on to act in a majority of films by Varma Films, was praised by
Filmindia, one of the most popular magazines of its time,
for her promising role in ''Thes''.
As with ''Thes'', to generate a prototype for commercial success, the Munshiram Varma and Kidar Sharma duo used an important member of ''Suhaag Raat''’s ensemble in ''Neki Aur Badi''.
Filmindia, in its review of ''Suhaag Raat'', referred to the film as "Geeta Bali's Sohag Raat", giving Geeta Bali much credit for its box-office success; Geeta Bali was cast in an important supporting role in ''Neki aur Badi'' by the Munshiram Varma and Kidar Sharma team. Finally, consistent with Kidar Sharma’s munificence with giving newcomers to the film industry a break, the Munsihram Varma and Kidar Sharma pair provided newcomer
Roshan the opportunity to make his debut as a
music director
A music director, musical director or director of music is a person responsible for the musical aspects of a performance, production, or organization. This would include the artistic director and usually chief conductor of an orchestra or concert ...
with ''Neki Aur Badi''.
In addition to Geeta Bali,
Madhubala was also cast for a leading role in "Neki Aur Badi" by the Munshiram Varma and Kidar Sharma duo. In the year just before the release of the film, Madhubala had earned her earliest critical and commercial achievement for the film
Lal Dupatta (1948), which
The Indian Express
''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932 by P. Varadarajulu Naidu. It is headquartered in Noida, owned by the ''Indian Express Group''. It was later taken over by Ramnath Goenka. In 1999, eight y ...
claimed had “put her in the top rung of heroines.” Further, two of Madhubala’s films released in the same year as "Neki Aur Badi" were box-office hits:
Dulari (1949) was the eighth highest-grossing film of 1949 and
Mahal (1949) was the third highest grossing film of the 1940s decade.
Despite having promising stars like Geeta Bali and Madhubala, "Neki Aur Badi" was commercially unsuccessful.
Mohan Deep, in his unofficial biography about Madhubala, claims that this lack of success for "Neki Aur Badi" indicates how thoughtless Kidar Sharma could be.” Not surprisingly, "Neki Aur Badi" marked the last time that the Munshiram Varma and Kidar Sharma pair worked together at producing a film.
The last film to be produced by Munshiram was
Aurat (1953), a
Hindi
Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
-language re-working of the Biblical tale of
Samson
SAMSON (Software for Adaptive Modeling and Simulation Of Nanosystems) is a computer software platform for molecular design being developed bOneAngstromand previously by the NANO-D group at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science an ...
and
Delilah. Unlike, ''Suhaag Raat'', ''Thes'' and ''Neki Aur Badi'', which were produced by the Kidar Sharma and Munshiram Varma duo, Munshiram was the solo producer of ''Aurat''. Also, unlike the Hollywood film
Samson and Delilah directed by
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille (; August 12, 1881January 21, 1959) was an American filmmaker and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of American cinema and the most co ...
, ''Aurat'' was not successful at the box office.
In addition to the above four films, Varma Films (the company founded by Munshiram and his five brothers) produced and distributed the following six films:
Patanga,
Sagai (1951),
Badal (1951),
Parbat (1952),
Ladla (1954) and
Pooja (1954). Of these six films, two were commercially successful. ''Patanga'' was the seventh highest-grossing film of 1949. and ''Badal'' was the eighth highest-grossing film of 1951.
Munshiram died in 1958 ending a prolific film career that lasted for over a decade and averaged about one movie produced and/or distributed each year.
Filmography
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Varma, Munshiram
1902 births
1958 deaths
Hindi film producers
Film producers from Mumbai