A few years ago, the Fort Lee Film Commission petitioned the Fort Lee Mayor and Council to designate the corner of Main Street and Central Road "John Barrymore Way." Today that corner sports a special commemorative street sign honoring Barrymore.  

Buckheister’s Hotel stood at that location in 1900, when then 18-year-old Fort Lee resident John Barrymore made his stage debut in the play, "A Man of the World," directed by his father, Fort Lee resident Maurice Barrymore. At the time, Maurice was the most prominent actor of the Broadway stage.

A fundraiser for the Fort Lee Fire Department, the event saw the birth of the stage career of an actor who is still considered the most prominent stage actor in American history, Jack Barrymore.

Wednesday, Feb. 15, marks Jack Barrymore’s 130th birthday, and what better place to celebrate it than on the very spot where his acting career began? The Fort Lee Film Commission, the Fort Lee Coalition for the Arts and the Fort Lee Historical Society will lay a wreath Wednesday at 5:45 p.m. at the base of the street sign on this historic spot.

The festivities will then move to the bar at In Napoli Restaurant just across the street for the annual Barrymore Birthday Fundraiser. The public can pay $15 at the door for a selection of free appetizers and a cash bar, with all proceeds going toward the Fort Lee High School spring production of the musical, "Mack & Mabel." The production, produced via the Barrymore fundraiser and the Fort Lee Film Commission, will celebrate the founding of Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studio in Fort Lee in 1912. 

The film commission will integrate into the show actual footage from one of the first Keystone films, A Grocery Clerk’s Romance (1912), shot outside Rambo’s Saloon on First Street in Fort Lee. A California collector found the film and sent an un-restored, digital copy to the film commission.

Through this rare film and the student actors at Fort Lee High School, we will bring back to life four shows in May, the early days of Keystone Studio and the lives of Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand—all made possible by the memory of an 18-year-old Jack Barrymore making his stage debut on our own Main Street here in Fort Lee, New Jersey.