
When Tom Meyers thinks of growing up in Fort Lee, New Jersey, he always goes back to the summer of 1971 when he was 10 years old. He and his friends would go to Gus Becker's Saloon on First Street where the owner, in his late 80s, would give the boys sodas and tell them about bartending in the 1910s, when Fort Lee was crawling with movie actors, crew members, directors and producers.

Meyers remembers a poster of Florence Lawrence, the first American movie star, on the wall. Lawrence personally signed the poster to Becker who told the boys about her, the actress Pearl White and the acting family, the Barrymores, who all shot and worked – and in the case of the Barrymores lived – in Fort Lee.

The New Jersey borough just across the Hudson River from New York City became the first American film town in the 1910s when a concentration of film studios operated all within a few blocks of each other, producing thousands of silent films. At its height in the mid-1910s, the town had 11 working studios including Fox Film Corporation, the Goldwyn Picture Corporation, Éclair Studios and The Solax Company.

By 1918 however, changing circumstances were disrupting the film industry, particularly in Fort Lee. With the United States' entrance into the First World War in 1917, the 1918 influenza pandemic and the frozen-over Hudson River in 1918, many of the East Coast studios shut their doors and moved out west to Hollywood, leaving Fort Lee mostly deserted with empty lots and abandoned studios.

Despite two short documentaries about the borough, one made in 1935 and the other in 1964, Fort Lee's film history was mostly forgotten in the wake of Hollywood. Its history wasn't even taught in Fort Lee itself, Meyers says. Instead, he learned about it from his parents and grandparents, who had worked in the industry, and from Becker.

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Fort Lee, New Jersey, was the first-ever film town in America in the 1910s, even before Hollywood. At its height, the small New Jersey borough across the Hudson River from upper Manhattan had 11 working studios in close proximity to one another. Pictured is America's first named movie star, Florence Lawrence, on a film set

Studios were drawn to Fort Lee as the perfect place to shoot a variety of films because of the wide range of landscapes. The borough had open fields, quiet residential streets and the cliffs of the Palisades. Starting in 1907, the first New York City-based studios were taking day trips to Fort Lee for filming. Pictured is a still from an unknown Western made by the Champion Studio and shot in Fort Lee

Fort Lee's history has been brought back to the light, however, with the release of a documentary which has just been nominated for a New York Emmy. The Champion: A Story of America's First Film Town was produced by the Fort Lee Film Commission, of which Tom Meyers is the executive director and founder.

The 30-minute documentary follows the story of the Champion Studio, Fort Lee's first film studio founded by Mark Dintenfass in 1910. When the Fort Lee Film Commission started the project in 2013, the studio had just been sold and was in danger of being demolished. As much as commission tried to preserve the historic building, it was torn down that same year.

After it was demolished, the scope of the documentary changed. The project was no longer just about the studio, it became about 'trying to save American film history. It told a story wrapped around Fort Lee as the first American film town', Meyers says.

'This is what happens when you don't care for this history,' Meyers tells DailyMail.com about the demolished Champion studio. 'What should have happened there, that could have been a jewel of a building, converted into a place for new filmmakers to learn their craft, like student filmmakers, young people. Right now it's still an empty lot.'

Though film studios were taking day trips to Fort Lee starting in 1907, the Champion Studio (pictured during its construction in 1910), was the first studio to set up shop directly in Fort Lee

The Champion studio (pictured from the 1964 documentary Before Hollywood There Was Fort Lee, NJ) was also one of the last studios to remain in Fort Lee. In 1923, it was sold and turned into a printing plant, which it remained as until it was sold again and demolished in 2013

Though the history of Fort Lee as a film town has been largely forgotten in the shadow of Hollywood, a new documentary about the borough has been released. The Champion: A Story of America's First Film Town was even nominated for a New York Emmy

Fort Lee, named after General Charles Lee by George Washington during the Revolutionary War, is across the Hudson River – and today the George Washington Bridge – from upper Manhattan. After the Civil War it became something of a resort town and by the late 19th century the Palisades Amusement Park in Fort Lee and Cliffside Park, New Jersey, brought even more visitors.

About 30 miles away in West Orange, New Jersey, the American motion picture was born. Thomas Edison built the first film studio, the 'Black Maria' in 1893 and he patented the first motion picture camera in 1897. Though it is often overshadowed by Hollywood, Meyers says this history should not be forgotten.

'All of that happened in the state of New Jersey,' he says. 'It wasn't California, it wasn't New York. This was the state of New Jersey.'

However, production companies did spring up in New York City, filming the short, silent films that were popular at the time inside their brownstone studios on 14th street, or on the roof for exterior shots. By 1907, some studios had discovered Fort Lee as a good place for filming with its dirt roads, residential streets lined with clapboard houses, open fields and the cliffs of the Palisades, all perfect for a wide range of films.

Gus Becker's Saloon, which was then known as Rambo's Saloon, played a huge part in the industry. It was the perfect hangout for actors and crew members when they had finished filming and the upstairs was often used for a dressing room for actors. The saloon itself starred in hundreds of films, its porch easily arranged for different sets.

Because of Fort Lee's close proximity to the city – just a hop, skip and a jump via the new subway system and a ferry across the Hudson – it became the perfect place for filming day trips. It also helped that filming in Fort Lee made it more difficult for Edison's patent detectives to follow independent filmmakers and gather information in order to charge licensing fees for the use of cameras, film and projectors.

The 30-minute documentary follows the story of the Champion Studio within the larger context of Fort Lee and the earliest years of the film industry. Pictured left is a movie poster for All For Love, which was made in Fort Lee by Victor Studio, which had combined with the Champion Studio. Both studios were among those who had been folded into the Universal Film Manufacturing Company in 1912. Pictured right is a scene from the 1911 short, silent film How He Redeemed Himself, produced by Champion Studio and shot in Fort Lee

Pictured is a still from the 1911 short silent film In the Great Big West, produced by Champion Studio and shot in Fort Lee. The film is about a young doctor named Harold Walters who is in love with Dorothy Desmond, but conflicts between his love for her and his duties as a physician

Mark Dintenfass (pictured) was the first to set up his studio, Champion Studio, actually in Fort Lee. He had gotten his start in film producing in New York City, but was put out of business there because of licensing fees put on by Thomas Edison who had the patent for the first moving picture camera

Though Mark Dintenfass had started producing films in New York City, the fees put him out of business, so he decided to set up his company just beside Fort Lee, in the town of Englewood Cliffs. His studio, the Champion Studio, was the 'first permanent motion picture studio to be built in the Fort Lee area', film scholar, Rutgers professor and Fort Lee Film Commission member Richard Koszarski says in the documentary. It was built in 1910 and by the end of 1911, two other studios had already followed suit and set themselves up in Fort Lee.

'It's this concentration,' Koszarski tells DailyMail.com. 'It's what we call the film town, or the phrase that's used is the birth of the American film industry. Now, there were studios around the country before they started building studios in Fort Lee. There were studios in Brooklyn, downtown Manhattan, Philadelphia. What you have in Fort Lee is this concentration. They are packed together. Within one block you'll have three different companies operating studios, which means that you also have around it all the support equipment. You can walk, literally, down the street to your choice of film laboratories.

'That concentration, we think of Hollywood, the concentration of studios. And it wasn't just a coincidence, it was useful for the studios to be together because, so they could interact. But that happened earlier and in an even more compact way in Fort Lee... There was a lot of this cooperation and people could learn from one another. It's a good thing to have a concentration of an art industry like that.'

Companies including the American branch of the French Éclair Studios, the Solax Company, the Willat Film Manufacturing Company, the Peerless-World Studio and Paragon Studio had brought themselves to Fort Lee in the 1910s, and others including Victor Studios and Goldwyn Pictures were founded in Fort Lee, making it the first-ever American film town.

To stay afloat in the midst of the intense competition between studios, Dintenfass and other smaller independent studio heads joined together into the Universal Film Manufacturing Company in 1912, which bought The Champion and kept Dintenfass on as the manager.

Pictured is a still from the restored 1912 short film Robin Hood, the earliest surviving film version of the story, which was shot in Fort Lee by Solax Studio and directed by Étienne Arnaud

One of the most frequently used sets in Fort Lee films was Rambo's Saloon, which started as a hangout for actors and crew members after a long day of filming. Its upstairs floor became the perfect place for actors' dressing rooms and because the porch could be easily arranged for different sets, the saloon itself starred in hundreds of films. Pictured is Florence Lawrence in her dressing room

Before the Champion documentary came out last year, there were two other attempts to remember the history of Fort Lee. Ghost Town: The Story of Fort Lee was created in 1935 by Theodore Huff and Mark A Borgatta. Before Hollywood There Was Fort Lee, NJ was created in 1964, directed by Thomas Hanlon

As the first film town, Fort Lee was a center of progress. Filming techniques and technologies were advancing and women were given empowering roles. Actress Pearl White was the star of the adventure film serial, The Perils of Pauline, which showed her riding horses and climbing the Palisades cliffs. Alice Guy-Blaché was the first female film director and studio owner of Solax, which she had built in 1912. She produced thousands of films in her career.

However, by 1918 things were changing for the film industry and Fort Lee. Because of restrictions put in place when the US joined World War I in 1917, East Coast studios would have days without electricity, which prevented them from filming without lights. Meanwhile, the constant sunshine in Hollywood meant West Coast studios didn't need constant lighting. When the influenza pandemic hit the United States in 1918, it started in the East Coast, giving studios another excuse to shut their doors – though it ended up following them west.

But one of the final problems for Fort Lee specifically was that in the winter of 1918, the Hudson River froze, cutting off the only transportation between Fort Lee and New York City: the ferry. The George Washington Bridge, which connects the two today, wasn't completed until 1931.

Koszarski says the East Coast studio owners decided to 'temporarily' close their doors and just focus on Hollywood for a while before returning, 'but then it was really easy to say, well we won't open them again', though he adds they did end up coming back, just not to Fort Lee.

'A number of the companies said, we already have studios on the West Coast and the East Coast, let's just forget about this East Coast thing. Too many problems,' he says. 'Immediately, they realized that was not a perfect solution. So as soon as the war ended, they began to build new studios in the east, but not in New Jersey, because there was no bridge to New Jersey.'

Pictured is an ad for a Goldwyn Pictures film, The Danger Game, released in 1918. Goldwyn Pictures had their studio in Fort Lee. The Danger Game, starring Madge Kennedy in the leading role, is a 'melodramatic comedy' and is included in the DVD set with the 2017 documentary The Champion

Florence Lawrence (painting left and a 1908 portrait right) was a Canadian-American actress and the first movie star. She was at the height of her fame in the 1910s, starring as the leading lady in many silent films shot in Fort Lee. She starred in almost 300 films during her career

Fort Lee stayed relatively quiet after the studios left in the 1920s, with the exception of African American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, who rented out Fort Lee studios in the '20s and '30s at a time when he wouldn't have been able to shoot in Hollywood. He is considered the first major African American feature filmmaker, who produced both silent and sound films.

Other than Micheaux and other independent filmmakers renting out those spaces, the abandoned industrial properties and empty studio lots remained up until the 1940s and '50s, Koszarski says, though some were used for Broadway company warehouses. Laboratories and film storage warehouses did remain in Fort Lee, fully operational and employing the residents of the borough.

'That was kind of your back office business,' Koszarski says. 'But it employed lots of people. It didn't employ fancy movie stars or directors, so it gets written out of film history.'

Another film included in The Champion documentary DVD set is The Indian Land Grab, a 1910 short Western shot in Fort Lee

The borough only really came back into the limelight in 2013 with the Bridgegate scandal where toll lanes on the upper level of the George Washington Bridge were intentionally closed by political appointees of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. But as far as film history, Fort Lee is hardly, if ever, mentioned. Part of that can be attributed to a stylistic change, Koszarski says, which happened around 1918 and made it so that films made before 1918 weren't preserved.

'The style of making films changed,' he says. 'So that films from before 1918 suddenly seemed very old and early. And films made after 1918, even though they may be silent films, still seemed to work like "real movies". So people who were stars before 1918 or directors, the careers, they just went into a black hole.'

The loss of Fort Lee's history also comes down to the fact that Hollywood was just better at promoting itself.

'Hollywood has a much more successful promotional machine,' he says. 'Hollywood had a Chamber of Commerce that promoted itself as the center of the film universe. That this is where all films are made. And they began doing that in the late teens and early '20s and as far as New York was concerned, New York, you know, would sort of look down on this as just like crazy entertainment business... And in Fort Lee, it was a residential community. They were almost happy to see these noisy industries leave. Of course they took the jobs with them. So it was very easy to write it out.'

He adds: 'And unfortunately, there's a huge amount of the product that has just vanished. We don't have it anymore so that even historians can't dig out old films.'

To stay afloat in the midst of the intense competition between studios, Dintenfass and other smaller independent studio heads joined together into the Universal Film Manufacturing Company in 1912, which bought The Champion and kept Dintenfass on as the manager. Pictured is a Universal Set from 1912

When Tom Meyers was growing up in Fort Lee in the early 1970s, he says he and his friends used to go to Gus Becker's Saloon - what used to be Rambo's Saloon - after school. Meyers says Becker, the owner who was in his late 80s at the time, would tell them all about bartending in the 1910s when the film industry was still big in Fort Lee. Becker even had a poster of Florence Lawrence (pictured) on the wall that she had personally signed to Becker

Back in 2013 Meyers heard that Rambo's Saloon was going to be demolished, so he and the Fort Lee Film Commission, which he founded in 2000, worked with the Fort Lee Mayor and Council to prevent that from happening. They were able to arrange for the house to be turned into affordable housing for veterans and their families, while still maintaining the exterior of the building.

Around the same time, there was also word that the Champion studio had been sold and was going to be demolished. Unlike Rambo's, the Champion was in Englewood Cliffs, where the mayor and city council were less interested in preserving the space. The Champion had been sold by Universal in 1923 to a printing plant, which is what it continued to be until 2013 when it was sold and demolished.

Its demolition is what prompted the commission to create The Champion documentary based on Koszarski's 2004 book Fort Lee: The Film Town. The documentary was released in a DVD set in October, which includes the 1935 documentary about Fort Lee called Ghost Town: The Story of Fort Lee as well as eight silent films produced in the borough from 1910 to 1918.

Koszarski says the documentary isn't necessarily about just the Champion Studio so much as it is about the importance of taking care of history.

'The Champion documentary is not just important because we said oh here was this studio, this rather small and even in the context of Fort Lee, insignificant studio,' he says. 'It's because the documentary is about trying to save history and reminding people that film history is not just something that comes in a can on reel, but film history also is cultural and there are physical archaeological traces around us.

'It's kind of a reminder that even for a little studio, it did have some firsts. It was probably the first one built out here and so on. I can't, and the movie doesn't, make the argument that they were making the best films, even in Fort Lee. But they were making films… but at least you had this trace, this archaeological trace and then the archaeological trace is gone.'

After the 1920s, Fort Lee stayed relatively quiet and the closed up studios remained mostly unused with the exception of a few independent filmmakers and African American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, who is considered the first major African American feature filmmaker and produced both silent and sound films. He rented studios in Fort Lee in the '20s and '30s at a time when he wouldn't have been able to shoot films in Hollywood. Pictured is a still from his 1920 film The Symbol of the Unconquered

Iris Hall (pictured) starred in the silent film. This scene of the film was shot on the side of the Champion Studio (in the background). The Symbol of the Unconquered is the last time the Champion Studio is pictured in a film

For Marc Perez, the director of the documentary, a member of the Fort Lee Film Commission and someone who grew up in Fort Lee as a child, the more he worked on the film, the more passionate he was about it.

'Filmmaking is an art form,' he tells DailyMail.com. 'That's still really new when you compare it to everything else, music painting and sculpture and all these things. It's really like a baby compared to all that and I don't think people yet understand that these short films made in 1915 were a piece of art. Nobody knew what they were doing and they figured out how to tell a story with this technology, but I don't know if [people] understand that it needs to be preserved today or else the film gets disintegrated, it goes away... It's really unappreciated right now. And I think just more of this kind of stuff is needed to appreciate.'

Despite the loss of the Champion Studio building and the years of its forgotten film history, the Meyers and the commission are working to create a space for film to have a future in Fort Lee. Back in 2001, the Fort Lee Film Commission attempted to save the historic Barrymore House, where the American acting family had lived. Though the house was demolished, the commission plans to open the Barrymore Film Center in 2019, which will have a film museum and a 260-seat cinema where they plan to showcase classic films, art house films and student films.

'We want this to be not just about Fort Lee, although that'll be the anchor,' Meyers says. 'But truly make this really a place where American cinema has a home, the history of American cinema and the future of American cinema and give that through a perspective of world cinema.

'It's going to be a lot of diverse programming and all of this really comes out of the rubble of the Champion Studio. So out of that loss, we're going to enshrine the memory of the Champion and tell that story to future generations in this film center. And we hope that'll help preserve what history has left, not only in Fort Lee, but around the country.'