John KampfeFort Lee, Home, Movie History, New Jersey Movies, New Jersey Profiles

Part 4 of a 5-Part series

The film industry in Fort Lee was like a shooting star. It shined brightly as it moved quickly across the sky before disappearing into the horizon — to the west in Fort Lee’s case.

The first film studio set up shop in Fort Lee in 1910. That number would swell to 17 in relatively short order. But before the decade even was through the exodus to California was in full swing.

There were a variety of reasons. Among them was the fact that the residents who once welcomed the film industry to Fort Lee with open arms now had a change of heart … for reasons of self-preservation.

“The end of the Fort Lee studios came with both a bang and a whimper,” Richard Koszarski wrote in his anthology Fort Lee: The Film Town. “Fires and explosions in local studios and (film processing) laboratories not only destroyed these buildings but terrified many of their neighbors. Support for the ‘film interests’ became a political football, pitting local businessmen (garage owners, restaurateurs, etc.) against residential taxpayers.”

According to Koszarski, a coal shortage during the winter of 1918 shut down production at most studios. Several by then also had built facilities in the Los Angeles area. So they picked up and moved their operations completely to Southern California, never to return.

“Weather conditions, land and labor costs, and transportation would eventually have driven most of the film companies out of Fort Lee in any case,” Koszarski noted in his book. “But at a time when the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce was actively promoting the virtues of filmmaking in Southern California, Fort Lee officials did nothing — indeed, often seemed to encourage the movie companies to go elsewhere.”

Unfortunately, the town and its residents got what they wished for. When the studios left so did the majority of the jobs. The studio buildings that didn’t burn down were for the most part abandoned, left to rust and crumble.

At first, however, the town thought it had a lifeline.

“In the 1920s the town pinned its hopes on the George Washington Bridge and thought there would be a lot of real estate speculation,” explained Tom Meyers, Executive Director of the Fort Lee Film Commission.

The town extended itself financially by building “a gigantic high school and beautiful Art Deco borough hall,” Meyers said. But the real estate boom never materialized.

“Fort Lee was the only town in the history of New Jersey that went bankrupt,” Meyers noted. “It was in receivership until the late 1950s when the high rises began to go up. If you look at Fort Lee back then, it was like Appalachia.”

But while the film companies left, the movie industry itself never really completely exited Fort Lee. Filmmakers continued to lease space for individual projects at studio facilities such as Solax and Universal well into the 1920s. Others continued to use the borough as a backdrop for their films for a few more decades.

“We have not established what was the definitive last movie shot in Fort Lee as we are learning films may have been shot here into the 1950s,” Meyers said. “The last big studio film was 1925 at the Universal … ”

Among the most prolific filmmakers who continued to work in Fort Lee in the post-studio era was Oscar MIcheaux. Micheaux, the industry’s first African American filmmaker, was a trailblazer in a town that blazed a silver screen trail.

“Micheaux made films in Fort Lee on and off from 1920 through his final film in 1948 (The Betrayal),” Meyers said. “The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920) was the greatest film he made in Fort Lee. He directed The Exile (1931) here, which was the first all-talking African American musical.”

The Illinois-born Micheaux made more than 40 films during his career. Also among them was 1925’s Body and Soul, which marked the film debut of the legendary actor/singer/athlete/social activist and New Jersey native Paul Robeson. The movie was shot mostly in Fort Lee.

Koszarski noted in his book that silent film production in Fort Lee and the New Jersey/New York area in general had basically vanished by the mid-1920s. But the advent of the “talkies” at the end of the decade resulted in a reprieve of sorts for film making in Fort Lee.

“Ultimately, it was the old Peerless studio on Lewis Street in Fort Lee that became the busiest, and most successful, of New Jersey’s early talkie studios,” Koszarski wrote. “The studio had been seized by the town for back taxes, and Phil Goldstone, a low-budget producer from the west coast, took it over with the idea of soundproofing it and making it available to other independents.”

He claimed that Peerless was “the first in the nation to offer independent producers access to real sound stages.”

While Peerless — which by then had been renamed Metropolitan — was the center of the talkie universe in Fort Lee, the old Ideal Studios also had a fair share of sound pictures made under its roof. W.C. Fields made his talkie debut in 1930 in The Golf Specialist, which was shot there, according to Koszarski. For the most part, though, Fort Lee’s sound stages were relegated to smaller budget, “ethnic” films.

As film making dwindled to nothing by mid-century, several of the studios did maintain film storage facilities and laboratories in the Fort Lee area for many years.

“Most of the studios in Hollywood sent their films to Fort Lee for the striking of prints for distribution all over the world,” said the Fort Lee Film Commission’s Meyers.

That activity eventually ceased, as well.

But there is one last vestige of the film industry in Fort Lee. Tucked away on a side street on the west side of town is a tall, imposing structure — Meyers calls it “the fortress” — that was once part of the Paragon Studio complex. It’s called the Brulatour Building. It now is the home of Bonded Services, a film storage facility.

Next: Fort Lee Road Trip: In Search of Movie History

Click here to read Part 1: Hollywood? Fort Lee Once was Heart of Movie Industry

Click here to read Part 2: Filmmakers Went All-in with Fort Lee

Click here to read Part 3: Fort Lee: Where Stars Were Made