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Lambert Castle, Paterson, NJ The
Birth and Early Development of
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The first theatre in the county built exclusively for showing motion pictures was the Regent. This beautiful, modern amusement house was conceived and erected by Jacob Fabian of Paterson who officially opened it to the public on September 14, 1914. It stood between old Union Street, now (1959) called World Vet’s Place, and Hamilton Street in Paterson.
Jacob Fabian and his sons, who were affiliated with their father, had by this time demonstrated their genius in the motion pictures and their ability to foresee a great new era in the industry. On March 6, 1926, an AP release from Los Angeles stated that Jacob Fabian and Sons had acquired a large block of stock in the West Coast Theatres, Inc., the largest company of its kind in America. Subsequently, the Fabians bought large interests in the Stanley Corporation of America to whom they transferred their interests in the great many theatres that they owned and operated in Passaic and other northern counties of the state. The Regent theatre no longer exists. Gone too are the old films seen on the billboards in front of it. Blanch Sweet, Fannie Ward, George Fawcett are names of a bygone era. Time makes many changes in the vocabulary of a people. In Passaic County half a century ago, the words magic lantern, peep show, nickelodeon and the less elegant nickel dump were universally understood. Today (1959), these words are virtually unknown; they have been replace by cinerama, television, video. All of the foregoing are a part of the vocabulary relating to the great world of amusement – the moving picture. Since New Jersey is the recognized cradle of the motion picture industry, with Passaic County paying no small part, from the standpoint of history it might be worthwhile to consider some of the facts in its development.
While the European inventors gave little or no attention to photography and screen projection, in the United States and especially in the Philadelphia area, considerable attention was placed on both of these features and applied in the early moving picture machines. In this country photographic magic lantern slider were projected upon a screen as early as 1848; and with the invention of the daguerreotype and gelatin dry plates great impetus was given to the moving picture enthusiasts. In Philadelphia, Henry R. Heyl projected photographs on a screen at the Academy of Music. This was in 1870. The inventions of the Kinematoscope by Coleman Sellers of Philadelphia and William E. Lincoln’s Zoetrope were great advances leading to the motion picture. It was not until 1887 that Mr. Edison became particularly interested in moving pictures for his great interest at about that time was concentrated in his talking machine. He did state, however, that it had occurred to him that it was possible to devise an instrument that would do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear; and by a combination of the two, all motion and sound could be recorded and reproduced simultaneously. (Eugene A. Luste of Bloomfield, N.J., who worked for Thomas A. Edison, developed a plan for the filming of the sound along with the picture. He actually made a short sound picture; but for the want of capital and encouragement, he never projected his invention. This was many years before the advent of the sound picture.) Edison, with the assistance of an associate, W. K. L. Dickson, an expert photographer, began work on a machine to produce moving pictures. This machine followed many of the ideas of his contemporaries. It consisted of a cylinder with cutouts in which transparencies on glass were inserted. Inside was a light. When revolved with a crank, the viewer received an illusion of a moving picture. It was in 1888 when this machine was completed. It proved to be very remote from a satisfactory moving picture so work on moving pictures was suspended. Meanwhile several people in the United States were attempting to
devise a flexible film coated with a photographic emulsion. In 1888
John Carbutt of Philadelphia developed a film of celluloid and sent it
to Mr. Edison and several others, who were also working on moving picture
machines, for them to try. George Eastman of Rochester at about the
same time developed a film that Mr. Edison tried and used; however, it
was the Rev. Dr. Hannibal Goodwin of the House of Prayer, Broad Street,
Newark, whose recent photographic film invention gave Mr. Edison the greatest
encouragement. Dr. Godwin had been working for a time in the attic
of the Manse, adjoining the church, trying to devise a film less fragile
than the glass slides that were used in the stereopticon in his Sunday
School
With the development of the flexible photographic film, Messrs, Edison and Dickson began work all over again in 1889. Edison had been very successful with his penny-in-the-slot phonograph and now he and his assistant concentrated on a machine that would provide a look for a penny. Their first effort was the production of a camera with which to photograph on a celluloid film. A camera was developed that would photograph a series of pictures as the film was pulled past the lens opening. It was hand-cranked and portable. In shape and size it resembled a small upright piano. With its completion, work was begun on the machine for showing the pictures. For this a huge box about 20 square feet and four feet in height was made. In an opening was placed a magnifying glass through which one could peep and see a picture moving as it was cranked. Thus the peep show came into being. After some refinements Edison applied for only U. S. patents in 1891
for his Kinetograph (camera) and his Kinetoscoope (projector). Failing
to acquire international patent rights, these machines were duplicated
and improved in various parts of Europe.
By February 1892, the motion picture industry was launched in New Jersey with the erection of the world’s first motion picture studio on the Edison property in West Orange. This was a small, frame building, black inside and out and mounted on a revolving base so that the sun might be followed. This studio cost in excess of $635 and was called the Kinetographic Theatre, but was better known as the Black Maria. Here were made and shown some of the first motion pictures ever made. Among those was The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots filmed in 1893; the film ran almost a minute. A peep showed Mary kneeling at the chopping block with the headsman swinging his axe and the spectacle of Mary’s head rolling in the dust (the head of a dummy, of course). Fred Ott, an employee of Mr. Edison was able to produce a lovely sneeze with funny facial contortions.
Fred Ott’s Sneeze was probable the first comedy released to the world. Scenes like a man shaving, a shoemaker at this bench working, a horseshoer in action, girls dancing and the infamous Long Kiss were among the first peeps. The Long Kiss is the first shocker of note. This outrageous short bit appeared in a peep show in 1896 and broke all previous records for attendance. The clergy denounced it as a lyric of the stockyards and demanded that it be withdrawn. It was a short scene taken from a popular play on the Broadway state, The Widow Jones in which May Irwin and John C. Rice starred.
Following the development of the Kinetoscope there was great activity at the Edison plant both in manufacturing the machines and in taking pictures. By 1894, the Edison Company had completed 10 Kinetoscopes with enough short subjects on film to launch them commercially. They opened their first Kinetoscope Parlor at 1155 Broadway, New York, on April 14, 1894. Here the machines were set up with each showing a different picture for approximately 30 seconds. Long lines of people waited with coin in hand for a look at the peep show. The Edison invention was an immediate success. While Mr. Edison concentrated on peep shows some others were working with screen projection of motion pictures. In Philadelphia, which for years was a center for motion picture and photographic development, several inventors set up their projection machines in make-shift halls and projected moving pictures on a screen. Among these was C. Francis Jenkins, a native of Indiana who patented his machine November 25, 1895. On December 18, 1895, before a distinguished audience in the Franklin Institute, Jenkins showed pictures life size on a screen. For this he was awarded a medal. And ten days later in Paris the Lumiere machine was used to present pictures in a theatre for which admission was paid. Thomas Armat of Washington, D.C. had collaborated with Jenkins in the development of the machine exhibited in 1895 and he also made considerable improvement on Edison’s Kinetoscope. But, lacking capital Mr. Edison procured this improved machine from Armat and presented it to the public in a demonstration at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall on Herald Square, N.Y., in April 1896, where Macy’s now (1959) stands. The improved Kinetoscope became known as the Vitascope and its main feature was its adaptation to longer films that would run about five minutes. These two moving picture machines were most popular for several years. The Kinetoscope machines sold for $200 to $300 and they soon appeared throughout the country. In 1896, both the Kinetoscope and the Mutoscope machines were operating in a peep show parlor in Los Angeles with an Edison phonograph supplying the music. By 1903, Edwin S. Porter, a cameraman associated with Mr. Edison, noticing that the peep show craze, so popular since 1895, was slowly losing its appeal, developed the idea of a longer film with a story. With the assistance of another Edison man, James H. White, they produced a picture, 500 feet in length that was a real thriller. It was called, The Life of an American Fireman. This being an immediate success, Porter then decided to write and produce through the Edison Company a longer film which would be a story quite complete and spectacular. This was in 1903. With this picture, made almost entirely in Passaic County, a new epoch was born in the great motion picture industry. It has been noted with the exception of Gone With the Wind and the Birth of a Nation, no other picture has had a greater influence in the development of the industry than The Great Train Robbery which ushered in the nickelodeon era. Continued
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Believing
that its huge cost would prove to be a great liability to Mr. Fabian, it
was frequently referred to as Fabian’s Folly during the early days of its
existence. It took but a few years, however, for Mr. Fabian to show
his friends how wrong they were. This playhouse for the movies was
the forerunner of many others of the same type in Paterson and throughout
the county for by 1915, the great progress made in the motion picture had
created universal interest in that form of amusement. The next year,
Max Gold, one of the first men in Paterson to operate picture shows, built
the Garden Theatre which he operated first, but later sold to Jacob Fabian.
Then in 1923, Mr. Fabian leased H. B. Kitay’s Rivoli and in 1925, he erected
the beautiful Fabian Theatre on Church Street, Paterson.
Thomas
A. Edison of West Orange, N.J., stands in the forefront, if not indeed
actually the one person most vitally connected with the birth of the moving
picture. On this point, there is some disagreement. For mechanically
the motion picture is not a single invention but rather a development in
at least three large areas, viz., the camera, the film and the projecting
device. Within each of these areas, many persons in Europe and in
the United States, intrigued with the idea of making pictures seem to move,
have been very active especially during the last three quarters of the
nineteenth century. Many devices and gadgets resulted which bore
strange names as: Thaumatrope, Stroboscope, Phenakistoscope, The Wheel
of Life, Kinematoscoope, Zoetrope, Kinetograph and many others.
