Movie magazines have always been an obsession across the globe. And Kochi was no different. The city has the distinction of being home to some of the earliest Malayalam film magazines in the State. Film journalism and film journalists cut their teeth in this city much before anyone thought of this as a specialised field of journalism.
Kochi’s history of film publications began a year after Balan (1938), Malayalam’s first talkie was released. P.R. John launched Talkie , which was the State’s first film magazine. This set a trend and soon Kochi became a sort of headquarters for film publications.
“One reason for this was because most of the film distributors had their offices in Kochi. The distributors used to give regular advertisements of films, which was a huge source of revenue for these publications. They provided the material for the ads, halftone blocks of photographs, and also content for the pages. So, running a film publication was good business those days,” says Dr. Sebastian Paul, who began his career as a film journalist. He also edited and published a film magazine Lavanya (1967) and worked for sometime in another popular film magazine of the time.
Krishnankutty Menon or K. K. Menon as he was known in film and journalistic circles, is perhaps the oldest living film journalist in the State. He is 82, is short of hearing, reads a lot and till recently was writing for Trikalam , an information magazine. He attends programmes at Changampuzha Park, Edappally, close to where he stays and constantly apologises for his fading memory. “My tryst with film journalism began when I launched my own magazine Vyjayanti (1954). Before this I was writing for a number of other publications, including translations of world classics,” Menon stops, smiles and then proudly adds, “You know, I’m a polyglot. I can read and write Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil and English. This helped a lot in my journalistic pursuits.”
Menon had a reason to name his magazine Vyjayanti . “Vyjayantimala was my favourite actress.” His favourite actor? “Madhu. I have met and interviewed him once when he came for a shoot at Aluva.” But Menon ran into financial problems and was forced to stop publication of his magazine just short of a year.
Says Sebastian Paul: “May be Menon, like me later, did not have that knack to make the project commercially viable. I was better for Lavanya went on for about three years and then published intermittently till the early 1980s. But there were other publishers who did extremely well. For example at one time M. D. George’s Chitra Kaumudi had a circulation of 50,000 copies. He was clever enough to serialise a Muttathu Varkey novel, a trend which other publications picked up later. Vasu Pillai’s Film Naadam , T.E. Bhaskaran’s Film , Ramachandran’s Chitra Pournami , and P.C. Kurian’s Usha , are some of the other successful publications that come to my mind. In fact, some of them like M.D. George (Angel Films) later became successfully producers.”
Most of those in the ‘business’ were not trained journalists. Some of the magazines hired writers, while others were one-man shows. “I did most of the writing myself in most of the publications I worked for that included even the question-answer column. Once, Prem Nazir filed a case against the magazine for an objectionable question and answer that I created. An apology in the next issue ended the matter. It was not easy those days to meet and talk to stars. So most of what we wrote was based on information we gleaned from other sources and then letting our imagination fly unfettered,” confesses Menon.
Theatre actors like P. J. Antony and N. Govindankutty, who later made a name for themselves in films, were regular contributors for the film magazines that came out from Kochi.
“We had gossip, discussions, photographs, question and answer columns, all the ingredients that make up the magazines of today. Of course, they were all in black and white and not the glossy, colour ones that we are so familiar with today. The actors were glittering stars that come down to earth once in a while. So we had huge crowds at the shooting locations with people wanting to catch a glimpse of those stars that had descended amongst them. Perhaps, we created a world that seemed so distant from the common man through our magazines. This was because we, film journalists, were ourselves so far removed from the world of cinema,” adds Sebastian Paul.
Film journalists also wrote for the song books and film notices. A majority of the early song books and notices were printed in various printing presses in Kochi. “Information and announcement of films reached people through film notices. They were small bits of paper, sometimes coloured with pictures of the lead actors or scenes with a synopsis of the story, info on the crew etc. It was usual those days to see a person pull a cart with posters of the film, led by a drummer and another person distributing the notices. Theatres also distributed copies of the notice along with ticket,” remembers Ravi Kuttikad, journalist.
For nearly 40 years Menon wrote for film notices and for a few song books too. The synopsis of the film came from Madras along with the film. The distributor handed the story to Menon who then used his creativity to write out something that tempted the audience to make a beeline for the theatres. “I wrote out the quintessence of the story always placing the readers on the edge, ending with the now famous, ‘more on the silver screen.’ I have made Malayalam translations for all language films, was paid decently and also got balcony tickets for the family,” says Menon.
With film magazines moving into multi-colour, offset printing, glossy paper, more professionally managed publications, Kochi lost out on this distinction.
“ Cinema Masika from Kottayam and Nana from Kollam changed the face of film magazines. When the Emergency was clamped and censorship came into force the mainstream newspapers and periodicals chose to enter the field of film journalism in a big way. This sounded the death knell for the smaller publications. Song books and film notices also became extinct. It brought the curtains on an era,” says Sebastian Paul.
