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New Delhi: Black marketeers minted money from selling Sholay tickets. Only four tickets were allotted to one person. As is typical in the industry, people said the film would only run for a week or two and then be forgotten.

The 1,500-seater Minerva Theatre at Grant Road in Mumbai proved lucky for Sholay. The audience watched the film on Cinemascope, not a 70mm print. The producer and owner of Minerva Theatre, Umesh Mehra, said, “Nobody noticed the difference. Everyone applauded how it looked and the scenes—probably due to Minerva’s sound and projection system, which was exceptional. The 70mm print arrived the next day.”

As it used to be in the past, the entire film industry was invited for the premiere, and murmurs of the film flopping at the box office had begun. Mehra said, “As is typical in the industry, people said the film would only run for a week or two and then be forgotten. But as everyone knows, it ran for two years, houseful in advance.”

So, when people said that the film wouldn’t work and would be forgotten in a week, what was the mood in the theatre? Mehra said, “The public mood and the industry mood are always different. The first day was mostly industry invitees—they like to pull down their own brothers. But the public loved it from day one. There was a one-kilometre queue before the booking offices, and seven days in advance, all twenty-one shows were full.”

Sholay played a big role in the life of black marketeers who struck gold with the film. One of the black marketeers bought a restaurant. However, the ticket price was Rs 5 for the balcony and Rs 4.50 for the upper stall. Mehra said, “At Minerva, we never gave more than four tickets per person. There’s a famous incident where a black marketeer came with a bag full of money, asking for all the tickets for the week. My father physically threw him out. After that, even if it was the editor of a newspaper, the ex-prime minister, doctors, or politicians wanting seats, they were required to submit an official written letter. We were that strict. Even so, with only four tickets per person, black marketeers would have five people in line. They’d go and come back again in the afternoon. People made money; some even bought flats from Sholay ticket sales. Good luck to them.”

Unlike today’s times, the premiere of films was attended by the film industry. Mehra said, “Back then, there was no groupism—everyone showed up. It was a well-attended premiere. Minerva had its own class; it wasn’t called the Pride of Maharashtra for nothing. With 1,501 seats, it was actually the largest cinema in the country.”

Minerva used to keep the first four rows of the theatre vacant. Mehra said, “That was because of the 70mm screen. It was so big that someone in the first row couldn’t see the full screen.”

There is nothing left of Minerva, the Pride of Maharashtra; only a barricade, and the building has been demolished. Mehra said, “Right now, there’s nothing there. It’s been barricaded; there’s no building left, and we did not shut it down. We actually sold it to someone who wanted to redevelop it. He made a mess and then went bankrupt. The company which bought it calls themselves connoisseurs of art, but the bank eventually took it back because they couldn’t pay.”

Sholay played at Minerva for five years and would witness fans returning to watch the film over and over again. Minerva came into being in the 1960s and belonged to F. C. Mehra, and it was renovated in the ’70s. The first film that was screened was his home production Lal Patthar (1971), starring Raaj Kumar, Rakhee, and Hema Malini.

Mehra said, “I have many memories. All our films played there—from Lal Patthar to Ali Baba, Sohni Mahiwal, and, of course, Sholay. Yash Chopra’s and Subhash Ghai’s films too. Sholay did well, yes, but Minerva had an attraction no film could ignore—no film ran less than 25 weeks there.”