universal_aerial.JPG

An aerial view of Universal Studios in Fort Lee.

(Courtesy of the Fort Lee Film Co)

As you eagerly await a red carpet glimpse of Tom or Cate or Oprah (not to mention Brangelina) on their way to this year’s brightly lit, star-studded Academy Awards in Los Angeles, consider this: Fort Lee, New Jersey, is the birthplace of the American film industry.

Yep. Universal built its first studio in the early 1900s in this unassuming locale near the cliffs of the Palisades. It was soon followed by 20th Century Fox.

“There were as many as 17 studios in Fort Lee at one point, prior to and during World War I,” says Tom Meyers, executive director of the Fort Lee Film Commission.

In 1912, D.W. Griffith directed Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore and Dorothy and Lillian Gish in “The New York Hat” along Main Street in Fort Lee. Three years later, sex symbol Theda Bara made her movie debut in “A Fool There Was,” filmed at the Fox/Willat Studio on Linwood Avenue. And, according to Meyers, the largest outdoor set ever built at the time was in Fort Lee for “Les Misérables” in 1918.

“Most of the town’s population, if not all of it, was employed at the studios,” says Meyers, whose grandmother worked as a child extra for various films and, later, in the film laboratories with her brothers and sisters. Her mother worked for Consolidated Republic Studio.

Also, lest we forget, Thomas Alva Edison built what is considered the first movie production studio (he called it Black Maria) in West Orange.

But California’s ample sunshine and mild weather beckoned. By the mid-1920s, the last major studio in Fort Lee closed, due, in part, to a coal shortage.

“You had these big gigantic studios in Fort Lee, and you had to heat them,” Meyers says. “And winters were rough.”

Still, Fort Lee retained some of its movie industry credentials until the early 1960s, through independent productions and its film storage and laboratories. One film storage facility is still in use today.

So, while lacking the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, Fort Lee has a solid, albeit lesser-known, foothold in film history. Just don’t call it “Hollywood East.”

“It’s a big mistake when people say Fort Lee was Hollywood on the Hudson. No. Fort Lee was before Hollywood,” says an emphatic Meyers. “When you’re talking about the beginnings of the American film industry, Fort Lee was the first American film town.”

This story appeared in Inside Jersey magazine's January 2014 issue.

FOLLOW INSIDE JERSEY: TWITTER • FACEBOOK • GOOGLE+