Director PSV Iyer Promoted This 1940 Film With Newspaper Ad, It Still Flopped

Film publicity has gone a notch up in today’s time. Film stars leave no stone unturned during promotions to attract the audience to watch their films on the big screens. But in the pre-independent era, it was not the same when there were fewer resources to promote the films. Director PSV Iyer also faced a similar problem for promoting his 1940 Tamil film Abala which has completed 83 years of its release on Monday. The film featured unfamous actors Vasantakumar, Baby Papa, VR Thanam, and Seethalakshmi.

The absence of leading actors of that era in the film meant that the director and production house Shree Krishna Films had to work more into its promotions. Reportedly, they promoted Abala with newspaper advertisements stating that the actors are going to essay key roles in the film.

The advertisement also stated that Abala also assured every emotion in the film is relevant for entertaining the audience. It also appealed to audiences of all age groups to watch. Catchy quotes were used to make the advertisement more appealing. Like, “you are missing something really important in life if you don’t book tickets for Abala,” and “you will not be able to miss out on any moment from Abala once you start watching it.”

At the end of the advertisement, distributors of South and North Arcot, Chengalpattu in Tamil Nadu and Mysore, and South Kannada districts were mentioned.

A class which was an important factor during that era in India was also given importance in the

advertisement. According to the advertisement, Abala is the only film that doesn’t distinguish among the audience based on class.

Despite all of the efforts made by the director and producers to make Abala a huge success, it reportedly turned out to be a commercial failure. The film was removed from the theatres in just a couple of days.

The storyline, songs, runtime, and other aspects associated with Abala are unknown as at those times records were not preserved correctly. Despite the failure of the film, the audience came to know about it due to the advertisement. At that time, Tamil films were also released in Mysore and other parts of Karnataka.

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