'Goodfella' Honors Fort Lee Filmmaker Alice Guy Blache

On Thursday night, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) honored posthumously Fort Lee filmmaker and cinema pioneer Alice Guy Blache with the DGA Special Directorial Lifetime Achievement Award. Madame Blache was honored as the first woman director in cinema history. 

Blache built Solax Studio in Fort Lee on Lemoine Ave., the present-day site of . The Fort Lee Film Commission and the Fort Lee Historical Society placed a marker at this site at the entrance, and it is the only marker in America dedicated to Madame Blache and her Solax Studio.

The Fort Lee Film Commission’s odyssey to gain DGA honors for our "Reel Jersey Girl," Madame Blache, began a decade ago. Our work started with Madame Blache biographer Alison McMahan, whose book, Alice Guy Blache, Lost Visionary of the Cinema, is considered, along with the Anthony Slide edited, The Memoirs of Alice Guy Blache, the best go-to books to gain knowledge and appreciation of Madame Blache. McMahan suggested we place a marker on the old Solax site, which we did and she along with Madame Blache’s great-granddaughter, Nicki Sanchez, helped us unveil that sign on March 13, 2004.

Our next step was to gain honors for Madame Blache by the Directors Guild of America, an organization created in 1936 in Hollywood. Our first traction within the DGA came when we met DGA Vice President Gary Donatelli at our 2008 Reel Jersey Film Festival.

During that festival, we had a symposium on Madame Blache that included a screening of some of her Solax films shot in Fort Lee. Donatelli bolted out of the theatre, wanting to know about Madame Blache, and over the ensuing months, we supplied him with books, articles and, most importantly, Madame Blache’s films. Donatelli then became our lobbyist within both the east and west coast DGA offices. We received a letter from then DGA President Michael Apted stating that the DGA considers Madame Blache a cinema pioneer and that they would seriously consider a way to  officially honor her at a DGA event. 

The event they planned on was the DGA Honors in 2011 that marks the 75th anniversary of the DGA. On Thursday night, Oct. 13, at the DGA Theater on 57th Street in New York City, DGA President Taylor Hackford opened the program to a packed audience of film industry professionals, as well as members of the Fort Lee Film Commission.

One famous face after another ascended the stage to introduce a clip reel to honor one of the four honorees. Actresses Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep were two of the presenters. Then the stage went black and Alice Guy Blache’s image appeared to flicker on the screen. A short clip reel on the life and career of Alice Guy Blache enthralled the audience. Lights went up, and to our astonishment, Martin Scorsese appeared at the microphone – the greatest living American film director and the most knowledgeable director on the American film industry was to be the DGA representative to formally honor Alice Guy Blache. 

We could not have selected a better person. Martin Scorsese spoke of Madame Blache’s groundbreaking career, not only as the first woman director, but also as a pioneer in narrative filmmaking, color and sound film, as well as the first woman to own her own movie studio. Scorsese spoke of Fort Lee and Alice Guy Blache’s Solax Studio, and then he introduced a clip reel that included images of the Solax Studio in Fort Lee and clips from the films she produced in the studio and on the streets of Fort Lee from 1912 through World War I. 

Scorsese is not new to Fort Lee; he specifically chose Fort Lee for key scenes in his acclaimed masterpiece, Goodfellas (1990), because he wanted to film in the same town where D.W. Griffith shot the first American gangster film, The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912).

We also honored his three-time Academy Award- winning film editor Thelma Schoonmaker with the Fort Lee Film Commission 2005 Barrymore Award. Scorsese has rediscovered many lost American films, and he has restored these films and made them available to the public via the Film Foundation. Even prior to the establishment of The Film Foundation, Scorsese has led the charge on the film preservation front.  

One of his greatest successes has been the rediscovery and restoration of the 1948 John Garfield film noir, Force of Evil (1948). This film captures NYC in all its black and white glory in a cautionary tale of crime as big business. Fort Lee even makes an appearance in the film as Garfield searched below the George Washington Bridge (on the New York side) for his brother, and Fort Lee and the Riviera Nightclub appear in long shots across the river.

So we thank Martin Scorsese for his wonderful, heartfelt tribute to our own Alice Guy Blache, Madame Director and a Reel Jersey Girl. Thank you, Mr. Scorsese, you are truly a good fella!

The Fort Lee Film Commission will start distributing free Fort Lee film history maps starting October 29/30 during our weekend historic jitney tour and walking tours. These maps will list Solax Studio’s location. Visit the Fort Lee Film Commission's online or the Borough of Fort Lee's website for more information.