Fort Hollywood, My Home Town

This is my contribution to For The Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon, hosted by Marilyn Ferdinand and Farran Nehme, a.k.a. The Siren. The Blogathon runs from February 14-21.

An interesting footnote of American film history is that before there was Hollywood, California there was Fort Lee, New Jersey. It doesn't have quite the same ring to it (perhaps not where a young mechanic can be a panic), but for all intents and purposes it's the location of the birth of a large-scale motion picture industry, one of the first the world had ever seen. The fact that the industry was born here is fitting really, as Thomas Edison and his assistant W.K.L. Dickson invented the 'Kinetograph' (history has suggested that Dickson was the more instrumental of the two), a crude early version of the movie camera which was designed to shoot films for Edison's Kinetoscope (essentially an early version of the Nickelodeon) when located at Edison's lab in West Orange, New Jersey. Edison also built his famous "Black Maria" soundstage in Fort Lee, thought of as the first proper film studio. But Fort Lee was the artistic home of many legends of the early medium: D.W. Griffith (as actor and director), Douglas Fairbanks, Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, Theda Bara, Oscar Micheaux, Mary Pickford, W.C. Fields, The Marx Brothers, Raoul Walsh, Lionel, John and Ethel Barrymore are among the noteworthy artists and performers to have worked in the town. In addition to this, Fort Lee housed many early manifestations of some of the medium's most noteworthy studios: Metro Pictures Corporations, Fox, Biograph, Keystone, The Champion Film Company (a precursor of Universal Studios) and Selznick Picture Corporations are examples of some of the studios that operated directly across the river from New York City.

The proximity of Fort Lee and the New Jersey Palisades (the term 'cliffhanger' is said to refer to the area's distinctive cliffs) to New York was what initially attracted film makers to the area, as the large amount of undeveloped land created an ideal situation for location shooting as well as land to build studios on. One of the earliest films shot in Fort Lee was Rescued from an Eagle's Nest (pictured below), directed by Thomas Edison and staring a young actor named David Wark Griffith, who would later achieve some notoriety as a director. Griffith got his proverbial foot in the door on these hallowed grounds, and soon after his appearance in Edison's film he would begin a prosperous relationship with Biograph as actor and later as a director (probably most noteworthy is the fact that Griffith shot some exteriors for his seminal The Musketeers of Pig Alley in Fort Lee).


As more and more studios began to set up shop in Fort Lee, the area became more and more prosperous. Between businesses designed to help the movie companies and businesses catering to the tourism of the area, Fort Lee became the first great movie town in America.


Alas, as with all great American institutions - from the Colonies to Baseball - a Westward pilgrimage was imminent, taking the movies away from the East Coast and relocating them to sunny California. Nestor Studios, which operated out of Bayonne, New Jersey, was the pioneer of West Coast based film making, as they were looking to make use of California's vast open spaces and year round warm weather (Nestor Studios would eventually be swallowed by mega-conglomerate Universal). Other studios quickly followed suit. Some studios kept their labs located on the East Coast but by the early 1920s the movie industry had more or less completely relocated to Hollywoodland.

The tragic element of this story is that very few of the films shot in Fort Lee have survived to this day. Studio fires were fairly common, between ultra-flammable nitrate film stock and the fact that the studios were built with large windows that trapped heat in the studios like a greenhouse (example below), and one studio after another burned to the ground. For instance, The Marx Brothers first film Humor Risk was screened once in New York and is thought to be lost forever. The incredibly rich cinematic history of Fort Lee has been almost completely destroyed, which is a hole in my heart, as I would love to see what my hometown looked like a century ago. Who knows what early masterpieces will remain unseen for all time?


And this is, as they say, the hook. So many films - as valuable a cultural indicator as we have - run the risk of suffering the fate the films of Fort Lee did. But we know so much more about the art and science of preserving films now, the only thing that's missing (and it's a big thing) is monetary support. That's why two of the most wonderful writers on the internet joined forces for this blogathon: to raise awareness and money for this most noble cause. As film bloggers, we do something very valuable by sharing our views with the world and engaging with works of art, but this cause is extremely important. This is bigger than all of us. It's estimated that 75% of all silent films are lost forever, though this is impossible to accurately gauge as accurate records were not kept at that time. I'm sure that 75% contains more than a few duds, but isn't it possible that we've lost films on the level of Metropolis, The Passion of Joan of Arc, or The Last Laugh? Though the quality of the films saved is virtually irrelevant, at any rate - as Henry Langlois said, "One must save everything and buy everything. Never assume you know what's of value. " We need to preserve these films for future generations, and let them decide what's great and what is not. And that starts with us. Donate anything you can spare to The National Film Preservation Foundation. Let's give something back to the medium that has given us so much.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO THE NATIONAL FILM PRESERVATION FOUNDATION