The American movie business started in New Jersey. Between 1893 and 1896 in West Orange, N.J., Thomas Edison was developing the early motion picture tech, inventing new ways to capture images in mo…
Between 1893 and 1896 in West Orange, N.J., Thomas Edison was developing the early motion picture tech, inventing new ways to capture images in motion, and the result is that “you have the only fully operational motion picture studio facility in the world,” says Richard Koszarski, professor emeritus of English and cinema studies at Rutgers University, and expert in the early motion picture industry in New York and New Jersey.
But over in Fort Lee, N.J., there was already a support system for tourists that switched easily to help productions, lots of diverse locations and plenty of space to spread out and build large stages, storage and production facilities. But World War I, the 1918 global flu pandemic, plus advances in film production technologies and the lure of California’s good weather and space to build combined to end the New Jersey boom times.
“In the early ’20s, the regular studios pretty much shut down, but these buildings, they’re only five years old,” Koszarski says. “So they’re available for independent filmmakers.” Koszarski notes that people were coming out to Fort Lee to make “Yiddish-language films. They’re making Italian-language films because in Italy, they don’t have sound movie equipment yet but they already have it in New Jersey.” Mormons made epic “Corianton” there in 1931.
World War II basically put an end to northern New Jersey’s run as a production spot. New York bounced back, according to Koszarski, but the studios in New Jersey hadn’t been maintained and upgraded, TV was taking over New York and California had become the entertainment capital of the world.
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