For Ft. Lee, Film Moments of 100 Years
Susan Farley for The New York Times

The New York Times
By HELENE STAPINSKI
Published: May 8, 2009

Nelson Page, at left, and Tom Meyers with a sign about Fort Lee?s film past.

NEARLY a decade ago, two Jersey guys with a love of movies started spreading the state?s best kept secret: New Jersey (don?t laugh) was the birthplace of American cinema.

?Before Hollywood, there was Fort Lee,? said Tom Meyers, executive director of the Fort Lee Film Commission.

Before the turnpike, toxic waste and the Mafia, New Jersey was known for its movie studios. The term ?cliffhanger? comes from the serial films made here called ?The Perils of Pauline,? which always included Pauline ? the silent film star Pearl White ? hanging on for dear life from the side of a cliff in the Palisades, Mr. Meyers said.

Next year marks the centennial of the first studio opening in Fort Lee, so Mr. Meyers and the commission chairman, Nelson Page, are working overtime trying to get the word out, tracking down and restoring old Fort Lee film gems, organizing panels, festivals, a documentary, jitney tours and a student film program, all in an effort to get what they believe is some overdue respect and attention for the town.

Their strategy seems to be working.

Producers for Turner Classic Movies, which is running a 10-part series in 2010 on the history of the American film industry, spoke with Mr. Meyers this winter and will be using the commission?s archival material as part of its documentary.

?When you?re looking at the entire history of movies, most people just think Hollywood,? said Jon Wilkman, who is producing ?Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood? for TCM. ?But a good portion of that history is in New Jersey, and a huge part of that is Fort Lee. It was a real breeding ground for filmmakers.?

In 1910, Mark Dintenfass opened the first studio, Champion, in the Coytesville section of the town. Carl Laemmle, a producer who eventually founded Universal in Fort Lee, shot his first movie, ?Hiawatha,? here.

Fox studios and at least eight other production companies followed, including Paragon, which, at the time, was the largest and most modern film studio in the world.

From 1910 to 1918, Fort Lee flourished because it was a quick ferry ride from New York City, and because it had everything a location scout could want: streets, woods, farms, waterfalls, fields, saloons and, most dramatically, the Palisades.

?D. W. Griffith would come and shoot there,? Mr. Wilkman said. ?He could stand in one place, aim his camera in one direction and be looking at farmland, then turn around and shoot a typical home and then turn in another direction and shoot a city alleyway.?

For interior shots, huge greenhouselike studios, which supplied abundant light for the slow film stock of the day, were built all over town. ?French towns? were built and destroyed for war films on the lot where the local high school now stands. The first slapstick comedies, westerns and serials were all shot there.

Many of the early pioneers of film cut their teeth on the Palisades, including Thomas Edison, Griffith, Roscoe Arbuckle, better known as Fatty Arbuckle, Mary Pickford, Dorothy and Lillian Gish, the Marx Brothers, Gloria Swanson, Lewis Selznick (father of David O. Selznick), Mack Sennett, the Barrymores and Sam Goldfish (before he changed his name to Goldwyn and became the G in MGM).

But then in 1918, a series of calamities, like something out of a disaster movie, struck Fort Lee: a wartime coal shortage and the coldest winter in memory hit, as did the influenza epidemic, closing the studios for what producers thought would be just a few weeks, Mr. Meyers said.

With the Hudson River frozen, and ferry service suspended, studio crews were moved to California that winter, and never returned. Though the Selznicks controlled much of the studio space in Fort Lee through 1925, and independent filmmakers continued to shoot through the 1930s, the industry never recovered. Because of highly flammable nitrate film, several of the old studios went up in flames.

For several decades more, film storage and processing continued in Fort Lee. But the town?s glory days were over.

Until Mr. Meyers started his educational programs, most people in the town had forgotten ? or had never even known ? the town?s history, he says.

Each summer, the commission holds an outdoor film festival at Constitution Park, the former site of Fox, Eclair and Metropolitan Studios. In the fall, the Reel Jersey festival is held, featuring historic films from Fort Lee and the films of the area?s up-and-coming filmmakers.

To help jog the lost memories of the town, the commission placed movie-poster-size markers around Fort Lee, which described the studios that existed at each spot a century ago. In digging a hole for one of the signs at the old Eclair studio, workers came upon lost 35-millimeter strips of film buried in the soil.

?It?s right under the surface,? Mr. Page said. ?That?s the beauty of it.?