Fort Lee, NJ was the original Hollywood, so they say, which makes last week’s beam-signing event for the Barrymore Film Center a logical occurrence.
The new 21,500-square-foot, 260-seat, “retro-futuristic” cinema/museum/movie archive building is scheduled to debut in October 2020. It was designed by renowned architect Hugh Hardy.
The official ground-breaking saw engraved ceremonial shovels in the hands of Mayor Mark Sokolich, accompanied by members of the Fort Lee Film Commission and Borough Council members.
The Barrymore Film Center (BFC), established by the Borough of Fort Lee, NJ, is dedicated to the borough’s significant history as the birthplace of American film. “Fort Lee is the first American film town where studios,” the Center says on its web site, “including Universal (1912), FOX (1915), and Solax (1912) — the first studio built and operated by a woman, Alice Guy Blaché — were established.” The stars of the day included Will Rogers, Mary Pickford, Dorothy and Lillian Gish and Lionel Barrymore.
Along with exhibitions on Fort Lee and world cinema history, the group continues, programming at the BFC will include major film retrospectives, and annual silent film event, film festivals, foreign film screenings, and showcases for emerging filmmakers. the center is being built by the Borough of Fort Lee and will be operated by the Fort Lee Film Commission.
Memorable motion pictures filmed in Fort Lee have ranged from “The Musketeers of Pig Alley” in 1912, to Universal’s first horror film, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” in 1913. “Filmmaking continued even after the industry moved to Los Angeles, and Fort Lee was the setting for the 1947 noir classic “Kiss of Death,” noted the New York Post.
The history goes all the way back to 1900, when Broadway actor and Coytesville resident Maurice Barrymore threw a benefit to raise money to build a firehouse for Company #2 on Washington Avenue in Coytesville, and Center relates. “His son, John, age 18, makes his acting debut at this benefit. Barrymore also ran another fundraiser for the purchase of uniforms for Company #2.”
In 1907, Thomas Edison’s Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest shot on location on the Fort Lee Palisades. “Film features D.W. Griffith’s first starring role as an actor, having appeared in bit parts in several films now identified.” Just a year later, early “slapstick” comedy, Biograph’s The Curtain Pole (directed by D.W. Griffith and featuring Mack Sennett), shot on streets of Fort Lee (Main Street). “IMP (Independent Motion Picture Company, which later joined with other independents to form Universal) shot first film on location in Coytesville, Hiawatha.”
