Hollywood’s Forgotten Roots How New Jersey Built the Film Industry
From Edison’s Black Maria to Netflix’s billion-dollar studio plans, the Garden State has always been at the heart of Hollywood.
Trenton, September 4 EST: Before the bright lights of Los Angeles and the Hollywood sign became shorthand for the movie business, the motion picture industry got its start in a far less glamorous place New Jersey.
It may sound odd now, but the roots of American cinema can be traced to Edison’s laboratory in West Orange, the early studios of Fort Lee, and even a patent filed in Newark that made modern film possible. For decades, New Jersey was more than just a backdrop for movies; it was the incubator of the whole industry. And, after years in the shadows, it’s starting to make a serious play to get back on top.
The First Flickers
The story begins with a clergyman. In 1887, Hannibal Goodwin, an Episcopal priest in Newark, patented a method for making film on a nitrocellulose base. That invention became the essential material for motion pictures. Just a few years later, Thomas Edison set up the Black Maria in West Orange, a tar-paper shack with a roof that could open to the sun. Out of this strange little building came some of the earliest moving pictures ever made, including Fred Ott’s Sneeze, a short clip of Edison’s assistant sneezing that became the first copyrighted film in the country.
It wasn’t glamorous, but it was the foundation of an industry.
Fort Lee’s Forgotten Reign
By the early 1900s, the action had shifted to Fort Lee, perched just across the Hudson from Manhattan. Cheap land, dramatic cliffs, and easy access to actors made it perfect for film production. By 1909, studios were springing up all over town. By the end of the decade, Fort Lee was buzzing with filmmakers, churning out silent films at a breakneck pace.
This was the era of Alice Guy-Blaché, one of the first female directors, and Oscar Micheaux, who used Fort Lee as a launchpad for The Exile, the first sound film made by an African-American director. Even the Barrymores, the first family of American acting royalty, walked these streets on their way to stardom.
The irony is hard to miss Hollywood, the mythical land of movies, didn’t get its first permanent studio until 1911, when the Nestor Film Company, a New Jersey outfit, opened shop out West. New Jersey was Hollywood before Hollywood.
The Fade to Black
So what happened? Edison happened, in part. His iron grip on patents and technology pushed filmmakers to escape to California, where the sunshine was endless and the lawyers were far away. By the 1920s, Fort Lee’s heyday was over. The industry had packed up and left, leaving behind little more than fragments of film reels and old photos of outdoor sets perched along the Palisades.
For decades, New Jersey’s role in film history was a trivia fact. Hollywood was California, full stop.
A Revival in Motion
But history has a way of looping back. Over the past decade, thanks to aggressive tax incentives and a hungry local workforce, New Jersey has been luring productions again. According to state figures, film and TV projects generated $592 million in revenue last year up nearly tenfold from 2017.
Major players are betting big. Netflix is pouring $1 billion into a production complex at the old Fort Monmouth Army base. Lionsgate is planning a vast studio in Newark. And 1888 Studios, named for the year Edison patented his motion picture camera, is being built in Bayonne as the largest purpose-built film studio in North America.
Tim Sullivan, who heads the state’s Economic Development Authority, put it bluntly,“Film and TV started in New Jersey. We were Hollywood before there was a Hollywood.”
Memory and Momentum
There’s also a renewed push to honor the past. In Fort Lee, theopened in 2022, showcasing the borough’s overlooked history as the nation’s first movie capital. Inside are exhibits on silent films, the Barrymores, and the once-bustling studios that helped shape American cinema.
Taken together, the museum and the new wave of production make a strange but fitting pairing for New Jersey as both a cradle and a comeback story.
The Next Act
For the carpenters building sets in Kearny, the electricians wiring soundstages in Newark, and the caterers driving trucks to Bayonne, this isn’t just about heritage; it’s about jobs. Big ones. If the Netflix and Lionsgate projects come through on schedule, the state could be looking at thousands of permanent positions and an economy reshaped by lights, cameras, and action.
Still, there’s a sense of unfinished business. The Black Maria is long gone, Fort Lee’s cliffside studios are silent, and California still dominates the global imagination. But the truth remains the dream factory started here.
And if the current momentum holds, New Jersey might just write itself back into the credits.
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A bi-coastal pop culture critic and former indie screenwriter, Gia covers Hollywood, streaming wars, and subculture shifts with razor wit and Gen Z intuition. If it’s going viral, she already knew about it.
