By the early 2000s, however, Alexandra Cinema had graduated from showing Hollywood fare to B and C-grade films interspersed with adult films. It was a time when local residents asked school bus drivers to switch routes so that impressionable school kids weren’t exposed to the “dirty” posters.

MUMBAI: Cinema buffs of a certain vintage still wax eloquent about Mumbai’s erstwhile Alexandra Cinema’s hammy film title translations. On its marquee, Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘39 Steps’ was dubbed ‘Ek Kum Chaalis Lambe’, ‘Double Impact’ became ‘Ram Aur Shyam’ and ‘Bruce Lee - The Legend’ morphed into the quintessentially-Bombaiya ‘Dadaon Ka Dada — Bruce Lee’.

By the early 2000s, however, Alexandra Cinema had graduated from showing Hollywood fare to B and C-grade films interspersed with adult films. It was a time when local residents asked school bus drivers to switch routes so that impressionable school kids weren’t exposed to the “dirty” posters.

Then about three years ago, in a startling about-face, the cinema hall took on a new avatar as a mosque-cum-Islamic institution. Today, the Dolby Digital speakers, which once blared item numbers, call the faithful to prayer and the audience’s catcalls have given way to an imam chanting Quranic verses five times a day.

The transformation began in 2011, when south Mumbai-based builder Rafiq Dudhwala bought the sprawling 15,000sq ft property for several crores and donated it to an Islamic NGO, Deeniyat, which deals in printing, distribution and the sale of Islamic books to Urdu and Arabic schools across the country. The huge structure stands bang opposite the Maharashtra College at Belasis road near Mumbai Central’s Nagpada junction.

At one time, scores of cinema halls dotted this 3km radius. Ardeshir Irani, who began his career as an exhibitor in the early days of Indian cinema, opened Alexandra Cinema in 1921 along with co-owner Abdulally Esoofally, another tent showman-turned-movie magnate.

From the outside, the theatre looks the same but its interiors have been transformed.

Dudhwala declined to comment on the transformation but the change was welcomed by residents of surrounding Muslim-dominated areas like Clare road, Nagpada, Agripada and Mumbai Central.

