Autumn Years Fall 2023

Filming The House of Hate on the Palisades, 1918.

Y ou may be surprised to learn that before Hollywood, the center of the cinematic production uni verse, from 1907 into the early 1920s, was Fort Lee. No less than 15 movie stu dios operated in Bergen County during those years. Even the term “cliffhanger” was coined here with the filming of the serial movie The House of Hate (1918), in which actress Pearl White was left perched precariously on the edge of the cliffs of the Palisades—when the movie suddenly ended. Finding out what hap pened to her meant returning to the movie theater the following week for the next installment—and, of course, buying a new ticket. New Jersey’s famous inventor, Thom as Edison, is credited with being the creator of many things—including mov ies. However, Edison was not always the originator of things, but rather the perfecter. The actual father of cinema

tography was the French inventor Louis Le Prince, and the French brothers Au guste and Louis Lumière were the first to present a commercial motion pic ture screening to an audience in Paris in 1895. Edison had a knack for better commercialization. He took the movie idea and ran with it by creating the first U.S. movie studio in West Orange, call ing it the Black Maria. Most early movie productions were called “actualities” and were very brief films showing an activity, from acrobats performing, to parades, to fire calls and other occurrences. When the Spanish American War broke out in February 1898, film crews were sent to Cuba to capture footage. The first known showing of

ANTHONY TARANTO

Cliffhanger Point today (Fort Lee).

celebration of the Spanish American War victory at Santiago. As part of the program, the Hackensack Band played while moving pictures were projected with an Edison Projectoscope behind the musicians. Footage of the battleship Maine was the crowd favorite. Later, in 1901, the first known commercial-mov ing-pictures exhibition in Bergen County was a feature in the very popular muti-act Diamond Jack Medi cine Tent Show that took place on

“moving pictures” in Ber gen County was on July 5, 1898, in Hackensack, where the Oritani Field Club held a patriotic

Kansas Street in Hackensack, where a movie of Queen Vic toria’s funeral was shown.

FALL 2023 I AUTUMN YEARS 37