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Health & Fitness

From the Archives: Historic Jitney a Fort Lee Time Machine to the Twilight Zone

Our Time Machine to the Past - the Fort Lee Historic Jitney tour

This past Sunday, June 9th, the Fort Lee Historical Society and Fort Lee Film Commission conducted our semi annual Historic Jitney tour of Fort Lee.  Each tour we give is themed and this tour played off our current Fort Lee Museum exhibit, Palisades Amusement Park, A Pool, A Book, A Centennial,  which runs through September 8th, 2013.  We chose the date of this tour as part of a weekend of events celebrating the centennial of the opening of the world’s then largest outdoor salt-water pool at Palisades Amusement Park (June 8th, 1913).  The Fort Lee Historical Society sponsored a picnic on the museum grounds on the centennial date that featured the famous Palisades Amusement Park vinegar French fries.  We also had a outdoor screening that night of the 1998 PBS aired documentary Palisades Amusement Park A Century of Fond Memories.  The documentary was introduced by the filmmakers themselves, Palisades Amusement Park historian Vince Gargiulo and David Comora.

 

The following day, June 9th, we ran a full day of historic jitney tours out of the museum.  The tours were led by Vince Gargiulo and myself.  Vince handled the first half of the trip, which included a tour down Route 5 to Edgewater to follow the old trolley line that led to the ferry.  The old Edgewater ferry near the now gone Terminal Liquors ended its run in the 1960s.  However a few yards north of that original ferry site is a modern day New York Waterway Ferry station and slip.  As the jitney parked at this spot Vince pulled out large photos of the original ferry slip and large trolley station on the Edgewater side.  Here is where Palisades Amusement Park was born.  In 1898 the trolley company had very few passengers on weekends as American workers now gained a 5-day workweek.  In order to boost trolley service on weekends a “trolley park” was built atop the Palisades in the towns of Fort Lee and Cliffside Park.  This Park on the Palisades swiftly evolved in to Palisades Amusement Park and by 1910 when brothers Nick and Joe Schenck purchased the park, it was one of the largest amusement parks in the nation.

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As we exited the ferry slip in Edgewater our time machine historic jitney bus retraced the old trolley route on present day Route 5 to Palisade Avenue.  The trolley ceased its run in 1938 and the old route with the horses shoe curve (said curve still exists but is weeded over and below the Palisadium Health Club outdoor track today) changed into buses that met the ferry and drove amusement park goers up Route 5 to the entrance of Palisades Amusement Park.  Eventually with the opening of the George Washington Bridge in 1931, automobiles would be the main mode of transportation to the park and in the end that would be the death knell of the park.  Traffic to the park by the 1960's was bumper to bumper from the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee south to the park thus causing both the towns of Cliffside Park and Fort Lee to rezone the park for high-rise development.  Though the last owner of the park, Irving Rosenthal, at first refused to sell, by 1971 age and ill health and no heirs led to his sale for the park for development.

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The next stop on our travels is the monument dedicated in 1998 near the site of the old main entrance to the park on Palisade Avenue.  Here, on the grounds of this residential high rise complex, sits a memorial to Palisades Amusement Park.  The marker is a bronze plaque with the image of park owner Irving Rosenthal.  The brick pavers surrounding the monument include names of park workers and rides.

 

During this portion of the tour I took the reins of history from my friend Vince and began to tell the tale of the birth of the film industry and one studio in particular, MGM.  The Schencks who owned the park from 1910-1935 also had a business partner named Marcus Loew.  They used the park for many film shoots including 1914’s famous movie serial The Perils of Pauline starring serial queen Pearl White and then child actor Milton Berle in his screen debut.  In 1916 film comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was back east in the Triangle Studio in Fort Lee for his boss Mack Sennett.  Sennett remained at Keystone Studio in California while Arbuckle and his troupe produced several short films in the Triangle Studio in Fort Lee.  Arbuckle starred in and directed these films.  One of the last films he directed in Fort Lee was A Reckless Romeo .  This film was shot in Palisades Amusement Park and outside the studio on Main Street and Linwood Avenue in Fort Lee.  Though Arbuckle worked for Sennett while making this film, the finished film was released through Joseph Schenck’s new studio as Schenck stole Arbuckle from Sennett.  Joe Schenck, at his NYC studio, would give Buster Keaton is first opportunity to appear in film and Arbuckle and Keaton made several New York area films during this period under the supervision of Palisades Amusement Park co-owner Joe Schenck.

 

Another piece of history is the story of Eddie Mannix.  Eddie, born in Fort Lee in 1893 in his family home on Main Street where the Fort Lee Public Library sits today, was a rough customer as a teenager.  Early in their ownership of the park, the Schenck brothers suffered losses from a gang of ruffians who broke into the park at will and took whatever they desired at any given time.  The Schencks were fabulous businessmen in that they didn’t deign to call the Fort Lee or Cliffside Park Police, rather they found out who the leader of the gang was and they immediately named him chief of security at Palisades Amusement Park.  That gang leader was Fort Lee’s Eddie Mannix and from that point on no losses were suffered at the park.  Eddie was like a younger brother to the Schencks and they recognized he had great skill with numbers.  Eventually Eddie managed the park and then went on to manage Joe Schenck’s movie studio in New York City.  This is were things get interesting – by 1924 Marcus Loew and the Schencks form a new studio to be opened in California, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, MGM.  They placed Louis B. Mayer as head of production in California and Marcus Loew became President of the new company and Nick Schenck one of his chief lieutenants, both staying back east.  A few years later after Marcus Loew’s death. Nick became President of MGM and remained so  through the mid 1950s.  Both Marcus and Nick knew Louis B. Mayer would do a good job but they did not trust him so they sent Eddie Mannix out to MGM in California to be superintendent of the lot but really to be a spy for them re Louis.  Well Eddie became great friends with Louis B. Mayer and was a powerhouse  on the MGM lot.  Clark Gable’s MGM contract was a handshake from Eddie Mannix.  Louis B. Mayer would be fired from MGM in 1951 and Nick Schenck would be removed from the presidency of MGM later in the 1950s, but only Eddie Mannix survived until his death in 1963, still in the employ of MGM.

 

Our jitney followed the trolley route through the junction area of Columbia Avenue where the trolleys would turn and we headed down Abbott Boulevard just as the trolleys did back in the day.  Our “trolley” trip had to take another route to Main Street as Firemen’s Park today cuts off the old trolley route to Main Street. 


We headed east on Main Street and passed our art deco Borough Hall (Fort Lee Memorial Muncipal Building) opened in 1929, and opposite Borough Hall is the Fort Lee Public Library, which again was the site of the Mannix Family home.  We passed the wall of the old Holy Angels School where behind that wall today sits the Mediterranean Towers.  The Holy Angels School stood at that site from the late 19th century through the mid 1960s.  That wall which survived the change can be seen in many silent films shot at this location as well as a classic film noir from 1947, 20th Century Fox’s Kiss of Death.

 

Our time machine then stopped near our Theda Bara Way sign on Main and Linwood and here we discussed the birth of Fox Studio’s in 1915.  We rolled down west on Main Street and passed the courtyard of the garden apartment complex that was the Fox back lot.  A large outcropping of rock survives in the courtyard and this rock can been seen in a production still from the 1915 Fox film Carmen with silent film vamp Theda Bara striking a pose that Madonna would be jealous of today.

 

Here our trip back in time headed north to Coytesville with a stop at Rambo’s Saloon.  As our jitney tour riders peered through the windows they saw a fence surrounding what is the most important link still left from Fort Lee’s days as birthplace of the American film industry.  Here we asked our riders to support the efforts of the Fort Lee Film Commission and Fort Lee Historical Society to save this piece of history as the building is scheduled to be demolished.  However the good news is there is movement behind the scenes via the Fort Lee Mayor & Council to try to save this history from the wrecking ball.  As I spoke to our jitney tour riders about the film pioneers that lunched in the grove of Rambo’s and exchanged new ideas on filmmaking I mentioned that the site also was used as a film location and a recently discovered film, A Grocery Clerk’s Romance, produced by Mack Sennett in 1912 showcases the much the same exterior of this historic structure.

 

The tour headed back to the Fort Lee Museum via Hudson Terrace where we made a quick stop to discus the famed  Riviera Night Club, or clubs if you will.  The first Riviera Night Club was in the Villa Richard Restaurant off Hudson Terrace in Coytesville.  The restaurant was built at the turn of the last century by famed chef Jean Richard.  By 1931 he leased the building to Ben Marden who opened the first Riviera Night Club at this site where it thrived until a fire destroyed it on Thanksgiving night 1936.  Marden built a new art deco Riviera Night Club further south atop the Palisades near the George Washington Bridge and that club opened in May of 1937.  The doors closed during World War II but in 1946 the club was sold to Bill Miller and it ran successfully until it closed New Year’s Eve 1953.  The Rockefellers didn’t want a garish night club atop the Palisades and they forced the closure of the club but not before Frank Sinatra made his comeback in a two week sell out engagement in September of 1953.  In October we will give another hisotric jtney tour and it will be on "The Gangs of Fort Lee" both celluloid and realife gangsters that populated our borough incouding the "real" owners of the Riviera Night Club, gangsters Willie Moretti and Abner "Longy" Zwillman.

 

So as our trip pulled past the new construction near Main Street we headed back thrrough the 19th, 20th and 21st  century Fort Lee courtesy of our archive and our memories and the ghosts of Fort Lee.

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