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

Part 2 of a 5-Part Series

Fort Lee and its surrounding areas in northern New Jersey had been popular shooting locations for filmmakers for several years during the early years of the film industry. But they began to establish permanent roots in the then-rural Bergen County community in 1910.

The first one to put down stakes in Fort Lee was Mark Dintenfass. The former herring salesman operated a nickelodeon in Philadelphia that failed and then opened the Actophone Studios in New York City, according to a 1935 Bergen Evening Record article reprinted in Richard Koszarski’s anthology Fort Lee: The Film Town. After shooting exterior locations in Fort Lee for several years, DIntenfass moved his entire operation to the borough’s Coytesville section under the company name Champion Studio.

“Fort Lee’s first studio wasn’t an impressive structure when compared with the giant studios of today,” wrote the Record’s Edmund J. McCormick. “But its 150 feet of shingled building with small glass studio was significant then for it marked the beginning of a period when producing companies were about to band together in settlements.”

Fort Lee certainly wasn’t the only place where there were movie studios during the silent film era and it wasn’t the first. New York City had a smattering of them. There were some located in Hollywood, and also in cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia. Even on the New Jersey side of the Hudson, the footprint of movie studios extended south all the way to Jersey City. But, beginning in 1910, Fort Lee would have the largest concentration of them.

“We had 17 studios up here employing everyone in town,” said Tom Meyers, Executive Director of the Fort Lee Film Commission.

Joining Champion in providing job opportunities for Fort Lee area residents were studios such as William Fox’s Fox Film Corporation (now 21st Century Fox), Carl Laemmle’s Universal Studio and Samuel Goldwyn’s Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, all of which are still in business today. There also were Peerless Film Corporation-World Film Corporation, Paragon Films, Inc., Herbert Brenon Film Corporation-Ideal Studios and Laboratories, Lewis J. Selznick Enterprises and Triangle Film Corporation to name a few. But Universal and Fox were among the most noteworthy.

Universal was formed as the Universal Film Manufacturing Company in 1912 as a consortium of several independent movie studios. They banded together to fight the inventor Thomas Edison and his attempts to control the industry through patents he held for movie camera components. Laemmle, who operated the IMP Studio in New York City, was treasurer of the group until eventually winning a power struggle among the principals to gain full control of the venture, according to Koszarski’s book. Much of the early production work under the Universal banner took place at IMP.

“Universal prospered under Laemmle and took on the distribution of additional independents … ,” Koszarski wrote. “But as it grew larger and began to centralize its bureaucracy, Universal realized that it needed a large new studio of its own — two studios, in fact.

“On 18 June 1914, ground was broken for such a studio in North Hollywood, still known today as Universal City. On 5 August, Universal purchased the estate of John Marx on Main Street in Fort Lee and began work on what was for a time the largest motion picture studio under one roof in the country.”

The Fort Lee Film Commission website indicates that the Fort Lee studio opened its doors in 1916 but within a year the space was leased to Goldwyn with Universal shifting its operations to the Champion Studio.

Many of the production companies leased studio space rather build their own facilities. Fox was a prominent example.

“The first Fox studio was rented from C.A. “Doc” Willat in Fort Lee,” according to the Fort Lee Film Commission. “It had two large shooting stage areas resembling gigantic twin glass barns. This remained Fox’s principal studio for the next several years until production was shifted to New York City and Los Angeles in 1919.”

Fox, who was inducted posthumously into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2015, was prolific during his time in Fort Lee. He made 40 films alone starring Theda Bara, whose sultry, dark looks propelled her to stardom and brought a new persona to the silver screen — the “vamp.”

“Fox had massive back lots behind the studios where they created European sets for the Theda Bara blockbusters,” Meyers said.

The French also got involved in Fort Lee in a big way. France had been a hotbed of film making for several years. French producers began establishing operations in the United States to tap into the growing popularity of movies on this side of the Atlantic.

Although its studios were in Jersey City, Pathé frequently used Fort Lee as a shooting location for its “cliffhangers,” so named because the film heroes inevitably were exposed to all types of calamities by the villains at the edge of the Palisades. The granddaddy of all cliffhangers, The Perils of Pauline starring Pearl White, was shot by Pathé along the Palisades in Fort Lee.

Other French film companies established their beachheads in Fort Lee.

“The Société Francaise des Films et Cinématographs Éclair was a French manufacturer of films and film apparatus,” Koszarski wrote in Fort Lee: The Film Town. “In a move to increase their share of the lucrative American market, then dominated by Pathé, they began construction of a studio and laboratory in Fort Lee in February 1911.”

The Fort Lee Film Commission’s website notes that Éclair produced mostly short films in a studio featuring the latest designs that “combined glass-covered shooting stages with administrative offices, photographic laboratory, dressing rooms, scenery storage, and workshops all in one plant.”

Éclair didn’t last long as an independent. It became a part of the consortium of studios that formed the Universal Film Manufacturing Company in 1912.

The Solax Company followed Éclair into Fort Lee in 1912. It was a groundbreaking venture because of its pioneering founder, Alice Guy Blaché. She and her husband Herbert built their studio on the east side of town adjacent to where Fort Lee High School stands today.

“Alice Guy was probably the most significant filmmaker to work and live in Fort Lee,” the Fort Lee Film Commission’s Meyers noted. “She to date is the only woman to build and operate a movie studio, and she is the first woman to produce, write and direct films. She likely was the first person to create narrative film making.”

Koszarski related in his book that Blaché and her husband Herbert arrived in America from France in 1907 to promote the Gaumont Chronophone talking film system. Blaché had directed films for Gaumont since 1896 but didn’t make any films in the U.S. until 1910 although she and her husband had established a branch of the Gaumont studio in the Flushing section of Queens, NY.

They parted with Gaumont and went out on their own first in Flushing and then with their Fort Lee venture. According to the Fort Lee Film Commission, among the more notable films that Blaché made at Solax were Dublin Dan (1912), Rogues of Paris (1913), Shadows of the Moulin Rouge (1914), and The Pit and the Pendulum (1916).

Blaché and her husband separated in 1918 and the Solax Company was dissolved soon after. Filmmakers continued to lease space at the Solax studio until fire destroyed the complex in 1929. It was razed the following year. Blaché also was inducted posthumously into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2013.

Next: Where stars were born

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