One Hundred Years for Universal Studios

In the beginning…there was Fort Lee, New Jersey. Situated on the top of the Palisades cliffs, it was a natural fortress during the Revolutionary War, and where, in the start of the 1900s, the early cinema revolution rooted and shot up in and all around the New York/New Jersey landscape.

One of the first cinema pioneers and a studio executive was Mark Dintenfass who founded the Champion Film Company in 1910. The Champion studio was built in the Coytesville section of Fort Lee and was the first to be built in Fort Lee area. In 1912, he became an executive in the new Universal Film Manufacturing Company founded by Carl Laemmle and the Champion studio became part of the Universal. Two other studios were built in Fort Lee at the time, Keystone and Solax, the studio owned and operated by first woman filmmaker Alice Guy Blache.

Alice Guy Blache, owner/operator of Solax Studio was built for $100,000

Another person needing mentioning is Jules Brulatour, a business man who helped bring the film industry to Fort Lee. He was likely the first film commissioner for the state, promoting Fort Lee, assisting and advising new companies arriving to the area. He helped Eclair build their studio in Fort Lee and instrumental in the making of the first documentary about the Titanic as he was the lover of Dorothy Gibson, a Fort Lee actress and survivor of the sinking. Her ordeal was captured almost immediately upon her arrival off of the Carpathia rescue ship in New York and put out in theaters by April 22, 1912.

This Marconi Wireless telegraph was sent to Dorothy Gibson from Jules Brulatour. Courtesy Fort Lee Film Commission

Brulatour was also involved in the organization of Universal Studios as Carl Laemmle purchased the land to build the largest East Coast studio and for a short time, the largest in the country. He was determined to have the best and hired architect Ernest Flagg, who designed the Singer Building in New York City and the Naval Academy in Annapolis, On August 5, 1914, Laemmle broke ground and the construction began on Main Street in Fort Lee.. The main studio was 150 feet by 85 feet with 100 dressing rooms to accommodate the talent. The film laboratory was a huge building behind the main studio.

The facility was one of the largest employers of Fort Lee residents and considered the most modern and largest in the world at the time (for a short time). School children and parents were drafted as extras. Thousands of overnight sensations become movie stars and an economic development factor created Fort Lee, a film town.

The Fort Lee studio opened in the fall of 1915, a few months after Carl Laemmle built Universal City in California. Originally, he envisioned this facility as Universal City East; however, it proved too costly to operate both facilities and Universal Studios remained in Fort Lee until 1917, when operations were shut down. Universal City executive Samuel Goldwyn would lease the Fort Lee studio that eventually fell into ruin as the entire film industry moved out to California. The building was razed in 1963.

In 2006, Fort Lee Film Commission dedicated a historic marker on the site and a historic walking tour map is available for finding the place where Universal Studios stood first, where it all began.

Historic information and photos were taken from the publications– Fort Lee: The Film Town by Richard Koszarski and Fort Lee, Birthplace of the Motion Picture Industry, by the Fort Lee Film Commission.