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Ismail N. Merchant 1936 - 2005

Ismail N. Merchant of London, U.K. England, U.K. was born on December 25, 1936 at Bombay, India now Mumbai, India in India. Ismail Merchant was married to James Ivory, and they were together until Ismail's death on May 25, 2005.

Ismail N. Merchant

Ismail Noormohamed Abdul Rehman

London, U.K. England, U.K.

December 25, 1936

Bombay, India now Mumbai, India in , India

May 25, 2005

London, Greater London County, England, United Kingdom

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Ismail N. Merchant Ismail Merchant (1936 - 2005)

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Ismail N. Merchant's History: 1936 - 2005

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Introduction

Ismail Merchant 1936 - 2005 Ismail Merchant’s love of film developed during his college years in Bombay. At 22 he came to the U.S. for a business administration degree, but was sidetracked into the film world. In 1961 he made the short film ‘The Creation of Woman’ which was subsequently shown at Cannes and earned an Academy Award nomination. While at Cannes he met future business and life partner James Ivory. Aimed at making English language films in India for an international market, they began Merchant Ivory Productions – it remains the longest professional partnership in independent film history. Prior to Merchant’s death, the team produced nearly 40 films, many of which included the talents of screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. In 1963 MIP’s first production ‘The Householder,’ became the first Indian-made film given international distribution by a major American studio. Beginning in the late 1970s the group became well known for a series of period films based on classic literature – ‘The Europeans,’ ‘The Bostonians,’ ‘Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,’ ‘Remains of the Day,’ ‘Heat and Dust,’ and their Oscar Award-winning E.M. Forster adaptations A Room With a View (1985), Howard’s End (1992) and Maurice (1987). Merchant’s strength as producer lay in his creative funding and amazing ability to produce lavish looking films for millions less than his contemporaries. He also loved to entertain and even wrote four best-selling cookbooks as well as several books about filmmaking. In addition to film awards, Merchant received several honors in his lifetime including the Padma Bhusan, India’s equivalent of knighthood in 2002. He died in 2005 at the age of 68 following surgery for abdominal ulcers
12/25

1936

Birthday

December 25, 1936

Birthdate

Bombay, India now Mumbai, India in India

Birthplace

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Ethnicity & Family History

Indian from India. Parents were Muslim. He was very spiritual but changed his last name to Merchant and had a long time relationship with his partner James Ivory.
Nationality & Locations

Raised in India. Educated in the United States and lived in New York and London.
Early Life & Education

Went to a Catholic High School and the New York University in Manhattan.
Religious Beliefs

Was raised as a Muslim and did not practice that religion after he became partnered with James Ivory.
Professional Career

Ismail Merchant Born December 25, 1936 in Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India [now Mumbai, Maharashtra, India] Died May 25, 2005 in London, England, UK (following surgery for abdominal ulcers) Birth Name Ismail Noormohamed Abdul Rehman Ismail Merchant was born on December 25, 1936 in Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India as Ismail Noormohamed Abdul Rehman. He was a producer and director, known for Howards End (1992), A Room with a View (1985) and The Remains of the Day (1993). He died on May 25, 2005 in London, England. He met his future partner, James Ivory, at a screening of Ivory's documentary The Sword and the Flute (1959) in New York City. Merchant and Ivory formed Merchant Ivory Productions in May 1961. Their first picture was The Householder (1963) in 1963. The National Portrait Gallery in London has paintings of Ismail and his partners James Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - even though they all live in New York City and none of them are English. (Ruth is German/Polish, Ismail is Indian, and James is American). Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 55th Venice International Film Festival in 1998. Merchant personally selected and groomed Kai Wong as a producer in the New York headquarters of Merchant-Ivory after he was impressed by an literary article Kai Wong wrote in Manhattan, which created cinematic narrative on paper. Educated at Bombay University and trained in business administration in New York. In addition to their 40-year-long professional partnership, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory were also longtime romantic partners. On location, producer Ismail Merchant was renowned for his cooking and feeding of cast & crew, a practice often necessary in Merchant/Ivory's earlier low-budget days. Personal Quotes (1) [on Denholm Elliott] He was an all-giving person, full of life. ... He had an affection and feeling for other actors, which is very unusual in our
Personal Life & Family

Cooking too. Hew wrote many cookbooks and like a chef, he would cook for an entire movie's crew!
05/25

2005

Death

May 25, 2005

Death date

Post Operation Illness.

Cause of death

London, Greater London County, England United Kingdom
Death location

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Obituary

Ismail Merchant, Producer of Sumptuous and Literate Films, Dies at 68 By Warren Hoge May 26, 2005 Ismail Merchant, whose film-making collaboration with James Ivory created a genre of films with visually sumptuous settings that told literate tales of individuals trying to adapt to shifting societal values, died yesterday in a London hospital. He was 68. Mr. Merchant's New York office said that the cause was undetermined, but that he had had surgery for abdominal ulcers on Tuesday. The Indian-born Mr. Merchant's carnival-barker personality contrasted dramatically with the artist's reserve of the Oregon-reared Mr. Ivory, but as producer and director respectively they achieved a personal and professional partnership that endured 44 years and produced award-winning films including "A Room With a View," "Howards End" and "The Remains of the Day." Impulsive, scheming and devoted to the deal in pushing his influence behind the scenes, Mr. Merchant was so unfailingly ingratiating up front that the actor Simon Callow once said the phrase "to curry favor" was invented for Mr. Merchant. At his death, he and Mr. Ivory were in London shooting "The White Countess," from a script by Kazuo Ishiguro, starring Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson, and Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave. Among the other notable films he produced were "Shakespeare Wallah," "The Europeans," "Quartet," "Heat and Dust," "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge," "Jefferson in Paris" and "The Golden Bowl." A Merchant-Ivory film set was always something of a family affair, with Mr. Merchant a more frequent visitor than producers generally are and the same crew members returning for service over decades. Once on the scene, Mr. Merchant was just as likely to be fetching tea for a company member or making one of his celebrated curries for the cast as pitching a fit about cost overruns or schedule snafus. Mr. Merchant traveled frequently between Europe and an apartment on the East Side of Manhattan, but he and Mr. Ivory centered their life in a 14-room manor house in Claverack, N.Y., built in 1805 and filled with enough elegant furniture, prints and paintings to be a setting for a Merchant-Ivory film. Born in 1936 in what was then Bombay, Mr. Merchant moved to New York in 1958 and earned a master's in business administration at New York University. His first film was a theatrical short, "The Creation of Woman," which was a United States entry in the 1961 Cannes International Film Festival. En route to the festival, Mr. Merchant met Mr. Ivory, and they formed a partnership to make English-language features in India for the international market. Mr. Ivory survives him, as do four sisters: Saherbanu Kabadia and Ruksana Khan, both of Mumbai; Sahida Retiwala of Bergenfield, N.J.; and Rashida Bootwala of Pune, India. The first Merchant-Ivory project was "The Householder," based on a book by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, an author who grew up in Britain and married an Indian. She then became the team's writing collaborator in an agreement signed on a napkin in a Manhattan restaurant in 1963. "When we first began, Ruth told us she had never written a screenplay," Mr. Merchant told The Associated Press. "That was not a problem, since I had never produced a feature film and Jim had never directed one." Merchant-Ivory came to symbolize scenes of rich décor and period atmosphere, palaces and parade grounds of India, castles and country houses of Europe, and lavish dinners and drawing-room intrigue. The two men asserted that the opulent settings were essential to portraying the breadth and diversity of the culture clashes central to their screenplays, which often portrayed societies in jeopardy with individuals fighting to retain their ideals. Mr. Merchant's adventures included stealing props and bailing actors out of jail. One famous stunt was getting around a ban on filming "The Proprietor" inside the Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles, France, by draping himself in robes and posing as the Maharajah of Jodhpur. His crew masqueraded as his entourage and, once inside, set up the shoot. Mr. Merchant believed that visual pageantry made narratives more accessible. Mr. Ivory took on the detractors who contended that the sumptuous surroundings overwhelmed the story lines. When the director Alan Parker once dismissed their oeuvre as "the Laura Ashley school of film-making," Mr. Ivory shot back, "The comment will be better remembered than any film he ever made." Asked to assess Mr. Merchant's strengths in an interview during the filming of "The Golden Bowl" in 1999, Mr. Ivory said: "He's a natural showman, a great publicist, and he's just very, very good at getting his way. He's made some casting decisions by just going ahead and offering jobs to people on the spot. He shouldn't do it, but then, when it's people like James Mason and Maggie Smith, how can I complain?" Commenting on Mr. Merchant's ability to finagle spectacle at bargain rates, Uma Thurman, a star of "The Golden Bowl," looked out at the grounds and turreted mansion that he had secured for the shoot and said: "You'd think this movie was three times the budget that he has. I think of Ismail as this person who keeps pulling rabbits out of hats."

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Ismail N. Merchant lived 4 years shorter than the average family member when died at the age of 68.

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9 Memories, Stories & Photos about Ismail

Amanda S. Stevenson

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01/09/2021

Ismail N Merchant

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

01/09/2021

Ismail N Merchant

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

01/09/2021

Ismail N Merchant

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

Comments

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

01/09/2021

Ismail N Merchant

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

Comments

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

01/09/2021

Ismail N. Merchant

Ismail Merchant was a producer and director, and he and his partners, James Ivory and Ruth Praver Jhabvala were known for Howards End (1992), A Room with a View (1985) and The Remains of the Day (1993).

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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