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The Film Industry

In the early years of the 20th century, a small town became the unlikely center of the nascent film industry. As the movies exploded upon North America's consciousness, this town skyrocketed into prominence and it wasn't long before the town's name and motion pictures were virtually synonymous. Then, like a cliffhanger finish, it ended in a slow fade to black... for Fort Lee, New Jersey, the one-time home of the American silent film industry.

There is little doubt that Thomas Alva Edison was a bona fide genius. You can't have been issued more than 1,000 patents on looks alone; Edison had a whole slew of miraculous inventions or improvements to his credit. He was also much more of a steely-eyed businessman than commonly believed. After carving out a dominant role in the budding film industry, in 1908 he, and other companies like Vitagraph, established the monopolistic Motion Picture Patents Company, or the Trust. The Trust controlled every phase of the motion picture business. If you wanted to be involved in films, you used only Trust-approved materials... particularly film stock. The Trust used a goon squad of detectives to assure that everyone was complying.

In the beginning, New York City was the center of the motion picture universe. Most studios were located around Union Square (along 14th Street and up Broadway to 23rd Street). In a city in which the number of theatrical actors outstripped the number of theatrical opportunities, it was no problem to find performers willing to go before the camera. The city also provided numerous different types of interior and exterior locations, for urban, ghetto, big-city crime or similar types of stories. All a director had to do was find a suitable outdoor location and start cranking. Actual backgrounds were not only inexpensive — read "free" — but also added a significant dose of realism to the film.

But whereas the city was great for some types of films, it was bad for others. Cowboy epics didn't translate well to asphalt streets, and it was tough filming medieval knights at swordplay and have a streetcar rumble past in the background. Was there a location that offered it all?

There was — just across the river in New Jersey. The state had everything: gritty urban cities like Newark, undeveloped countryside, tree-lined hills, the Palisades cliffs and over 120 miles of coastline. Best of all, much of this was just 30 minutes away from New York City.

It didn't take long for word to spread. Soon, many New York City film-makers were taking the ferries to cross the Hudson River to New Jersey. Once there, they drove along a shaded road for about three miles until they reached Fort Lee... a small town of about 4,500 people that was soon to become one of the most important in America.

Here's What We've Learned From Movies: All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices, which have large red read-outs to tell you exactly when it will go off. Should you need to pass yourself off as a German officer it will not be necessary to speak the language, a convincing accent will do. All apartments in Paris overlook the Eiffel tower. Most lap top computers are powerful enough to override a bank security system or the communication system of an invading alien civilization. Every single person in martial arts has a black belt in karate. When staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear. 1 man shooting at 20 men has more chance of hitting them than 20 men shooting at 1 man. During a police investigation it will be necessary to stop at a strip joint at least once. Large studio-type apartments in big cities are affordable by single people with a low wage. The entire British population lives in London. It doesn't matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a martial arts fight; your enemies will attack you one at a time while the others dance around you menacingly. If you're humming, everyone you meet in the street will know all the words to the songs (and the steps to the dances). When captured by an evil international terrorist, guns are not necessary to defeat them, sarcasm and wisecracks are your best weapons. Joke #1 Two persons never share the same name. There are plenty of names to go around for everybody, even if it means you have to assume a name like Dharma, Baby, Clark, or Chandler. If you're an expert at martial arts, one single kick can hit your opponent four or five times. If a police car is in sight, you should move away quickly, because it will be blown into pieces or crash. Police officers in uniform are disposable items. If you find yourself in a critical situation, Plan A never works. Nor does plan B. However, the least likely to work Plan E or Plan F, will work. If you should face an army with trained soldiers, don't worry. They are all very bad shooters, and will make visible easy targets with no intention to seek cover. If you are the first one in your party being chased by something/someone evil, you are likely to bite the dust. If, in this case, you are a girl, you will fall over at least once. If you are a guy you will stand up to the enemy, and die even faster. If, on the other hand, you are the one chasing the enemy, you will succeed and become a hero. Ball games are always decided in the last second. Your team always wins. It is perfectly acceptable to kill hundreds of people to save one single life. Dogs are very lucky animals. There is always someone willing to risk their life to save a dog. English really is the universal language. All alien life forms with enough intelligence to communicate will understand English. When eating a meal, you must always leave one side of the table open, even if it means you have to cram the rest of the party together. All school classes always start with the ring of the bell, and they all finish at the exact same time at the sound of the bell. School hallways are emptied and filled within a matter of seconds. Undercover agents lead an interesting, yet predictable life; The bad guys just won't let you do your job. Instead, they'll be giving you the guilt trip of your life when you try to put them behind bars, and the leader will probably get away with or without your help. But on the other hand, you will hook up with a beautiful, innocent friend of the gang. It's perfectly normal, and makes perfect sense to order a drink in a bar, and then just leave. Animals with a brain the size of a peanut are not as stupid as they may seem. Not only do they want to eat you, they also want personal revenge for lost family members and to humiliate you completely. Bad things usually happen at night. Daylight is the ultimate solution to evil. Children need to work on their credibility. They see and hear the darnest things, yet grown-ups never believe them. Firearms are not to be mistaken for - although their capability and function may suggest otherwise - long-distance weapons. When threatening to shoot someone with a gun or a rifle, you must stand close enough for your opponent to be able to grab your weapon. Rewinding or fast forwarding a video cassette or an answering machine makes fast, high-pitch sounds.

Formerly called Fort Constitution, Fort Lee changed its name to honor Revolutionary War general Charles Lee. Just incorporated in 1904, the town tasted film stardom a few years later when Edwin S. Porter, director of the landmark film The Great Train Robbery, shot Rescued from the Eagle's Nest on the nearby Palisades cliffs in 1907 or 1908. The film starred a young actor named David Wark Griffith — soon to be better known to the world as director D.W. Griffith.

As a director, Griffith remembered Fort Lee, and soon he and his cast were routinely making the ferry ride from the city to the New Jersey town. Among the films Griffith made in and around Fort Lee were The Man and the Woman, The Fatal Hour, A Tragic Love and many others.

Where Griffith went, others followed. Cowboy movie-maker Champion Studio settled in Fort Lee in 1910. Others with studios in town included Eclair, Peerless, Universal, Paragon, Solax and Lincoln. By circumstance and happenstance, the tiny town became the motion picture center of the United States, if not the world. As early director Arthur Miller said, "It certainly never occurred to any of us that this small rural town would soon become the movie capital of the world, years before Hollywood, California gained that title."

The town took to its new role with all the free enterprise energy it could muster. Everything and everybody in Fort Lee was for rent to the film companies, running the gamut from sturdy trees on which western bad guys could be strung up to homes, stores... even people. (One enterprising youth would greet the filmmakers in the morning before the day's shooting began with the cry of "Hey, mister, you wanna rent me mudder?")

In these simpler times, it didn't take an army to produce a film, just a cameraman (who often doubled as the director), the cast and maybe one or two others. Soon you couldn't throw a piece of popcorn in Fort Lee without striking a film crew. As one film executive noted, "Cameras were everywhere, grinding out dramas. Burglaries and dynamite and fat men rolling down hills, and nobody even turned to look at them. Kindly old ladies didn't blink an eyelid when three galloping Mexicans were shot and killed at their very door."

One of the most popular areas in which to film in Fort Lee was Coytesville. Modern technology, (c. 1900) had not yet discovered Coytesville. It still had dirt roads, wooden frame buildings and neither telegraph nor telephone wires. The unabashed star of Coytesville was Rambo's Roadhouse, a dead ringer for an Old West saloon, complete with swinging half doors and a wooden front porch. In reality, Rambo's was a hotel; the upstairs rooms often doubled as dressing rooms for the actors and actresses. Film companies would often gather at long tables under a 100-foot-long grape arbor on the side and eat, and the outside water pump was convenient for washing off make-up. But no matter: scores of desperadoes stepped scowling out of the front door of Rambo's onto the dirt road and were dispatched in short order by the white-hatted Good Guy.

To Fort Lee came Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Fatty Arbuckle, Theda Bara, Ethel Barrymore and countless others. Ground-breaking female director Alice Guy Blache mastered her craft in Fort Lee, and William Fox (20th Century Fox) and Lewis Selznick (father of David 0. Selznick of Gone with the Wind fame) started their film empires there. It was from the Palisades cliff near Fort Lee that Pearl White dangled at the end of her film, giving rise to the phrase "cliffhanger".

Indeed, Fort Lee and all New Jersey appeared in films so much that a trade publication complained about the constant use of "Jersey scenery" in films. Linda Arvidson, Griffith's first wife, said that she was "made love to on every rock and boulder for twenty miles up and down the Hudson." And then, in the blink of an eye, it all disappeared.

Several factors killed the film industry in New Jersey. The first was the weather. Arvidson remembered frozen make-up and damp, dreary hotel rooms in winter and muggy, steamy summers. The unpredictable weather also wreaked havoc with transportation. Many times, the ferries would not run because of ice or choppy water, stranding a company. As former stuntman Gustav Nelson stated, "It was the rotten New Jersey weather that killed the movie business in Fort Lee." During inclement weather, film companies had to use hot lights to film indoors... a bad combination with the highly flammable silver nitrate film. This caused numerous fires, including one in 1914 that ravaged the Eclair studio.

Finally, there were the ever-present Trust detectives, always ready to pounce on those who refused to pay the Trust for the privilege of making movies. Miller described the situation, "McCoy [the main Trust detective} and his cohorts appeared every place we went to photograph... Some in our company would spot one of the spies... I folded the legs of the tripod, put the camera over my shoulder and took off down the road or in the woods. [It became] impossible to work."

Was there an alternative? There was indeed. In 1913, Cecil B. DeMille wrote back to his fellow New York film-maker friends about the sensational weather in a place called Hollywood, California — 3,000 miles away from the Trust. Griffith had already gone west, and soon others followed. When coal for heating proved difficult to obtain because of WWI, the cross- country trickle became a flood. By 1925, the movie industry was virtually extinct in New Jersey.

Fort Lee settled down. Telephones, electricity, asphalt and other forms of progress invaded Coytesville. The studios were shuttered and demolished. The George Washington Bridge was built, irrevocably altering the Palisades cliffs and the town itself. Today, only memories remain of the oh-so-brief time when Fort Lee was one of the most important cities in the world.

Russell Roberts. Lights! Camera! New Jersey? . April/May 2008.

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