Ardeshir Irani Biography 
Ardeshir Irani was a writer, director, producer, actor, film distributor, film showman and cinematographer in the first era of Indian cinema. It includes both silent films as well as talkies. His real name is Khan Bahadur Ardeshir Irani and was born in Pune in the year 1886. Starting with silent movies, this film maker has made movies in several languages including Hindi, English, German, Telugu, Indonesian, Urdu, Persian, and Tamil. He was also a successful entrepreneur and owned film theatres, a gramophone agency and a car agency. He is the director of India’s first talkie, Alam Ara released in 1931. He is also accredited with making the first Indian English feature film, Noor Jahan (1934) and first Indian colour movie, Kisan Kanya in 1937.
Ardeshir Irani was born into a Zoroastrian family on 5 December 1886 in Pune. In 1905, Irani became the Indian representative of Universal Studios. With Abdulally Esoofally, he ran Alexander Cinema in Mumbai for more than 40 years. He became fascinated to cinema that he entered the field in the year 1917. His first silent movie, Nala Dayamanti was released in 1920. In 1922, Irani joined Bhogilal Dave and established Star films. Their first silent feature film, Veer Abhimanyu was released in 1922. In 1924, Irani founded Majestic Films in association with B.P. Mishra and Naval Gandhi. Together they have delivered 15 movies in the silent era. But later this production company was closed.
In 1925, Irani founded Imperial Films, and made 62 films and by the age of 40, he became an established celebrity of the entertainment industry. Ardeshir Irani became the father of talkie films with the release of his sound feature film, Alam Ara on 14 March 1931. He created history by making first Indian English film and first Indian colour movie. In 1933, Irani produced and directed the first Persian talkie Dokhtar-e-Lor. In total, he made 158 movies in 25 years. Prithviraj Kapoor and Mehboob Khan were introduced to films by Imperial Films.
Published: N/A
Updated: March 07, 2014
.jpeg "Lakshmi Menon (actress)")
