‘Reel Jersey Girls’ Exhibit Opens at Fort Lee Museum

The heyday of moviemaking and the female trailblazers who put Fort Lee on the map were on full display Friday night at the Fort Lee Museum’s centennial celebration, “Reel Jersey Girls: The Women Filmmakers of Fort Lee.”

“We were able to go through our archive and also very fortune to reach out to a film collector we know in New York City, Joe Yranski, and he loaned us as many photos as we wanted for this exhibit,” said Tom Meyers, executive director of the Fort Lee Film Commission.

Wilma Smithward of Fort Lee said she was proud to be a borough resident since this is where the movie industry was born. 

“To see all these pictures, it’s incredible,” she said. “I’m so glad I came here tonight.”

Meyers said there are many never-before-seen photos, including extremely rare Theda Bara shots from her personal scrapbooks that Yranski was able to acquire from someone who knew her years ago.

Solax Studios on Lemoine Avenue is visible in the photos, which may surprise those who don’t think there were back lots associated with Fort Lee studios and that they were only in California. 

“If you look in the Theda Bara case, you’re going to see these massive south sets built in the back lot of Fox on Main Street for any film she was making, whether it was ‘Camille,’ ‘Carmen,’” Meyers said.  

In addition to Bara, Alice Guy-Blaché, Pearl White, “Cliffhanger” star Mary Pickford and several other women are highlighted. 

A very rare scrapbook provided by actress Gail Kane’s grandson features her Broadway years. Though Kane is obscure today, Meyers said that back in the day, she had a production company in Fort Lee, and women filmmakers could own a studio here and produce their own films.

In 1910, Nonna Dooley (silent screen star Nita Naldi) attended Holy Angels,
a girls’ academy in Fort Lee, and across the street was Fox Studios. One day she climbed over the studio wall and started work as an extra. By the 1920s, she was making films with Rudolph Valentino and John Barrymore.

The exhibit runs through July 1, and photos and stars of the era will be interchanged over the course of the exhibit.

“I wish that people would really come to this exhibit and get a feel for what it was all about and the amount of work that went into creating these films,” said Christina Kotlar, communications chair for Women in Film and Television International. “Some of the very basics started here in Fort Lee, Alice Guy-Blaché, some other filmmakers and the film studios. We should bring it back home as the place where people should come to from all over the world and see where the first movies were made.”

Garfield resident Allen McDaniel grew up in Fort Lee and has an attachment to the town that’s surrounded by history.

“The things that they got their hands on (for the exhibit), any Hollywood historic museum would be envious I’m sure,” McDaniel said.

More information on the exhibit, “Reel Jersey Girls: The Women Filmmakers of Fort Lee” at the , including hours and information about arranging group tours is available on the Fort Lee Historical Society’s website, or you can call 201-592-3580.