From the Archives: Women's History Month in Fort Lee and a Woman Named Alice

In the annals of all the Alice’s in the world there are a few who have become household names. Growing up as a kid watching WPIX I would get to know a certain Alice married to a bus driver named Ralph and enjoyed her company each and every night as she and her Ralph made it through life’s travails in their Brooklyn tenement. However, that is not the Alice I speak of today.

Fort Lee’s Alice was born in France in 1873 and her name was Alice Guy. In 1894 Alice was hired by Leon Gaumont to work as a secretary in his photography company in Paris. Mr. Gaumont soon formed the new Gaumont Film Company and here is where Alice began her career as a film pioneer. Alice was the head of production for Gaumont from 1896 to 1906 and during this period she became the first filmmaker to develop narrative filmmaking. Alice also pioneered in the area of synchronized sound film with the Chornophone system as early as 1902.

In 1907 Alice and her husband Herbert Blache' came to the United States as Herbert was named the production manager for Gaumont in America. By 1910 they both formed their own company Solax based in Flushing, New York. In 1912 Alice moved Solax to Fort Lee where she built a modern $100,000 studio on Lemoine Avenue where the A&P sits today – there is a marker at the entrance to the A&P on Lemoine Avenue that is the only historic marker to honor Madame Blache' in America. 

Alice produced, wrote and directed hundreds of films at her Solax Studio in Fort Lee from 1912 through World War I, all before women in the United States had the right to vote. She employed many Fort Lee residents at her studio and in fact she and her family lived in Fort Lee in a house where the Wells Fargo Bank sits today on Lemoine Avenue near Main Street.

When Madame Blache' died at the age of 94 in 1968 there were only four surviving prints of the many films she directed. Today there are 140 Alice Guy Blache' directed films that have been discovered in archives around the world. This still amounts to only a fraction of Alice’s work but it does give us a  glimpse at the work of not only the first woman director in cinema history but a film pioneer whose career blazed a trail for all future filmmakers.

Madame Blache', thanks in part to her husband’s lack of business skills, was forced to close the Solax operation by the end of World War I. By this time her husband left her and her children and went out to Hollywood where he would continue his career as a director. Alice would go out to Hollywood herself with no real success due to a lack of opportunity and eventually she and her children returned to France. She supported her family by writing children’s books and she never directed another film. In the 1960’s she returned to New Jersey to live with her daughter who was a diplomat. She died not very far from her Fort Lee studio in 1968 and she is buried in Maryrest Cemetery in Mahwah, NJ, only a few miles from Fort Lee. The Fort Lee Film Commission dedicated a new grave marker to Madame Blache' on her July 1st birthday in 2012 and the marker indicates her role as a cinema pioneer.

The other way the Fort Lee Film Commission keeps the legacy of Alice alive is via an award named after her that is given each year to a deserving filmmaker who displays the innovation and skills of Madame Blache'. Previous recipients include Academy Award winning actress and director Lee Grant and independent film actress Parker Posey. This year the Fort Lee Film Commission is proud to present the 2013 Alice Guy Blache' Award to Susan MacLaury, Executive Producer of the 2012 Oscar winner for Best Documentary Short, Inocente, and two time Emmy Award-winning Executive Director of Shine Global. The presentation will be made as part of the Fort Lee Film Commission produced Reel Jersey Girls: Working in Film symposium at the 2013 Garden State Film Festival in Asbury Park, NJ on April 6th at 2:30 PM at  Stella Marina Restaurant, 800 Ocean Avenue in Asbury Park.

So this Women’s History month we can draw a line from the Solax Studio in Fort Lee in 1912 to the stage of this year’s Oscar ceremony in Hollywood where Susan MacLaury carried on the tradition and work of the first woman filmmaker, Madame Blache' or as we like to call her at the Fort Lee Film Commission, our Alice!