Ismail Merchant
Ismail Merchant (born Ismail Noor Muhammad Abdul Rahman (Gujarati: ઈસ્માઈલ નૂરમોહમદ અબ્દુલ રહમાન, Urdu: اسماعیل نور محمد عبد الرحمن); 25 December 1936 – 25 May 2005)[citation needed] was an Indian film producer, director and screenwriter. He worked for many years in collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions which included director (and Merchant’s longtime professional and domestic partner) James Ivory as well as screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.[citation needed]
Born in Bombay (present-day Mumbai), Merchant was the son of Hazra (née Memon) and Noor Mohamed Rehman, a Bombay textile dealer.[1] He grew up bilingual in Gujarati and Urdu, and learned Arabic and English at school. When he was 11, he and his family were caught up in the 1947 partition of India. His father was the President of the Muslim League and refused to move to Pakistan. Merchant later said that he carried memories of “butchery and riots” into adulthood.[2]
As a child at the age of 9, Merchant delivered a speech about partition at a political rally in front of a crowd of 10,000. He met his first mentor[who?] in 1949 thanks to family networks.[clarification needed] Consequently, at the age of 13, he developed a close friendship with Nimmi, an Indian film actress in her twenties, who introduced him to studios in Bombay (the hub of India’s film industry). It was she who inspired his ambitious rise to stardom.[3]
Merchant studied at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and received BA degree of University of Bombay. It was here he developed a love for movies. When he was 22, he moved to the United States to study at New York University where he received an MBA degree. While in New York, he gave up his family name of Abdul Rehman for Merchant.[4] He supported himself by working as a messenger for the United Nations in New York and used this opportunity to persuade Indian delegates to fund his film projects. Of this experience, he said, “I was not intimidated by anyone or anything.”[2] Immersed in a new world of art and culture, it was here that Merchant discovered the films of Bengali director Satyajit Ray, as well as those of European artists such as Ingmar Bergman, Vittorio De Sica, and Federico Fellini.[3]
In 1961, Merchant made a short film, The Creation of Woman. It was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and received an Academy Award nomination.[4]
