46 - Before Hollywood, There Was Fort Lee, N.J. (1964)

Forget what you think you know about early American film history if you’ve never heard of Fort Lee, N.J. According to this 40 minute documentary using footage from films from 1893 to 1925, we learn how the early studios built their empire in what was called “The Bagdad on the Hudson.”

Edison invented film in 1889 and built the first studio, The Black Maria, in 1893 near his workplace near West Orange, NJ. The studio had a skylight and was built on a turntable so the crew could turn toward the sunlight.

The first film to use both studio and exterior locations is considered to be The Great Train Robbery (1903) which actually had exterior shots filmed from a moving train.

Some studios were built on the rooftops of Manhattan, but by 1904 Lincoln Studios was built in Fort Lee where buildings in the town and the mountainous New Jersey terrain (think the Palisades area near the entrance of the current George Washington Bridge) could substitute for the hills needed for Westerns.

D.W. Griffith began his career as a leading man in Rescued from the Eagle’s Nest (1908), shown in the documentary. Here again exterior shots were combined with studio shots.

Max Sennett stars in a short directed by Griffith and shown in full, The Curtain Pole (1909), which shows the beginnings of Sennett’s characteristic chases in which much of Fort Lee’s streets were used. The sequence shows Griffith’s use of cross-cutting to build tension and “the Griffith surprise ending.”

Other studios grew up in the same areas, including: 

• Champion Studios (1909)
• Éclair Studio (1911)
• World-Peerless Studio (made 380 short films and features from 1914 through 1921)
• Willatt Fox Studio (with its giant greenhouse appearing studio, home to Theda Bara) 1916 created a multi-acre Paris set for a production of Les Miserables with many of the Fort Lee people as extras. The same set was used the next year for a production of Tale of Two Cities. Many of the Broadway character actors worked in the early films.
• Solax Studio made a film 1916 with Ethel Barrymore
• Paragon Studio (1915-1925) had a 200 foot stage with sunlight and electric lights at night. It became Paramount. The 1917 Mary Pickford Poor Little Rich Girl made their fortune and saved the studio.
• Lincoln Studio
• Universal Studio (1914-1924)

As World War I hit and the coal was limited for heating the studios, many producers moved to the warmth of California.

The best thing about the documentary, which is rather staid, is seeing what is left of the studios and seeing what was created in them. If you like film history, you should see this film.

Before Hollywood, There Was Fort Lee, NJ (1964) ***

A further explanation of the film is found at http://fortleefilm.org/history.html, which includes a map of Fort Lee. Fascinating stuff.