![]() Which is why Meyers and others went to such lengths to try to save it. The Champion Studios was not only the first and the oldest, but the most intact, of all the studio structures that survived from those days. Today, only a few fragments of Fort Lee's studio empire still exist in town, mostly unrecognizable: an old Paragon Studios administration building on John Street, a Paragon/Universal building on Jane Street, or still another structure on Lemoine Avenue that was once part of Solax, the groundbreaking film company that was the first to be helmed by a woman, Alice Guy Blaché. "To the end, it looked pretty much like what Micheaux saw."ĭinterfass later went into real estate, was an unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate in the 1920s, and eventually went into decline, dying in 1933. "You can recognize the building, it's amazing," Meyers says of this still-existing footage. The pioneering black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, whose groundbreaking films opened the door for actors like Paul Robeson, filmed the last known movie on the Champion grounds: "Symbol of the Unconquered," in 1920. By the 1920s, some were still being rented out to independent filmmakers. But when you see someone who pops off the screen like Florence Lawrence, you can see what audiences in 1911, 1912 saw."Īs the movie industry began to migrate west to Hollywood in search of sunshine (and to evade Thomas Edison's attorneys, who were busy chasing down patent infringers), the numerous, once-bustling studios of Fort Lee began to fall dormant. "Silent films are like any film made today - some are great and some are pretty horrendous. "You can see the vitality and charisma that made her a star," Meyers says. But a year after Dintenfass arrived, he built a big glassed-in studio next door to film more ambitious projects. "We were the first American film town, the birthplace of the industry," Meyers says.Ĭhampion Studios, headquartered in that a large nondescript wooden building on Fifth Street, mostly churned out formula Westerns and Civil War pictures in those early days. For a few years, at least, after Dintenfass set up shop, Fort Lee mushroomed into an industry town that became Hollywood's prototype. "The only street access was from Fort Lee," Koszarski says.īut "Fort Lee," in the coming years, would come to be an umbrella term for a New Jersey film industry that included towns as far away as present-day Guttenberg - just as "Hollywood," a little later, would become a blanket phrase for Beverly Hills, Culver City, and all the surrounding Los Angeles film towns. Nor was it in Fort Lee, but just over the line in Englewood Cliffs. ![]() In point of fact, the Champion building had already been built a few years before Dinterfass seized on it. "He was the first person to build a permanent motion picture studio in the Fort Lee area." We need a permanent spot'," Koszarski says. "This is the guy who says, 'Enough of taking the ferry for day trips. It was also just a ferry ride away from Manhattan - so moonlighting Broadway actors could film in the afternoon and be back in time for the 8 o'clock curtain.īut the film business itself, in those days, was still headquartered in New York. Dintenfass was the first to recognize the advantages to establishing a base in Jersey. Naturally enough: since the place offered a variety of scenic locales, from forests to city sidewalks to the towering Palisades cliffs. Many of those crude early movies had been made in the Fort Lee area. More: Celebrities, politicians and athletes who call North Jersey home More: Stew Leonard's, movie theater coming to Paramus More: Short film 'Passaic' delves into real 1960s crime Nickelodeons were the 5-cent storefront theaters that first began attracting large numbers of people, in the early 1900s, to the flickers. "He began in the nickelodeon business in Philadelphia, and then around 1909, 1910, he wanted to begin making his own movies," Koszarski says. "Apparently he had been a salt-and-herring salesman," says Teaneck film historian Richard Koszarski, whose book "Fort Lee: The Film Town" was the inspiration for the Champion documentary.
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