The movies came to Bihar in the early years of 20th century. J F Madan had acquired the 'Elphinstone Theatre Co.' of Bombay in 1902 and converted it into 'The Elphinstone Bioscope Co'. 
Patna had its own Elphinstone Theatre which became the Elphinstone cinema, and started showing short silent films. Close on its heels, two brothers felt inspired and were motivated into starting a joint venture, at Bhagalpur, named after their daughters, nick named as Madhu and Laxami . The combination made it Madhu Laxami . That was the name they gave to the first silent cinema theatre which a pre-existing warehouse premises housed for some couple of years. Bhagalpur got its first silent cinema with a small seating capacity of a hundred or two. Cinema, even though silent, drew huge crowd as it was a long jump, so to say, for its local audience whose upper limit for entertainment had so far been theatres which itself was mostly unavailable in its then advanced form, as theatre's primitive variants only used to be available in periodical fairs or festivals. 
The joint venture of the two brothers, babu Akhileshwari Sahai and Babu Nakuleshwari Sahai  was thus a run away success. Their success came in for their close friends' admiration, but one of his close friends , a local celebrity and Zamindar, admiringly questioned their imbecility about choosing a wrong venue, capacity wise as also  situationally. Their Zamindar  friend said he detested visiting the ramshackle theatre which was situated around an already crowded railway station area. He advised them to shift the theatre to his space situated in the then al most deserted Khalifabag locality which was off the main road as well as fully enclosed , bearing a large area that would afford all facilities for developing their entertainment industry.
By this time whispers were already in the air, signalling the possible advent of the talkie era.
Enthused, the two brothers gabbed the opportunity that thus came their way. In a brief span of time, Madhu Laxami Cinema got shut down and its infrastructure shifted whole hog to the new site situated at Shekhawat Hussain Lane of mohalla khalifabag. It carried a new name, "Picture Palace" , which screened silent movies but it updated itself into talkies as soon as the first talkie variant arrived in 1931, namely "Alam Ara".  

Likewise, with reference to Patna, After the advent of Talkies,  Elphinstone Cinema had started showing films with sound. Its ownership changed after the collapse of the Madan empire in 1930s. There is mention of another silent cinema theatre built in China Kothi, Patna, which withered away after the advent of Talkies in 1931. The first 'Talkie Theatre' of Patna was built at Babu Bazar, south-west Patna, debuting with the talkie, 'Veer Abhimanyu', in 1933 or 1934. Not long after, a huge fire destroyed the theatre, caused by the highly volatile nitrate film reels. It was never rebuilt. From this account, it transpires that Elphinstone graduated into talkies in later years. As such, despite being the first movie theatre of Bihar, it lagged behind in retaining its first place as the talkie theatre, conceding it it to Picture Palace which was upgraded earlier in time frame, thereby ranking as Bihar's oldest movie talkies, not movie theatre because that space stood pre-occupied by Patna's Elphinstone which may further boast of sustaining itself till date whereas its rival Picture Palace which over took it in the race of becoming the first movie talkies of Bihar has since withered, shutting down in 1986, its premises fragmented into un-symmetrically plotted low class market that has devoured the mortal history of cinema in Bihar, besides other things of not much value, save and except that which it stealthily hides from public vision, the failed judicial system. That is what this write up contemplates to address.