D. W. Griffith: The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)

The depiction of crime on film dates back to 1912 in Fort Lee. Before James Cagney became a "public enemy," before Edward G. Robinson became Little Caesar, before Paul Muni became Scarface and long before Ray Liotta became Henry Hill, Fort Lee was the birthplace of the gangster film.

D.W Griffith and his Biograph cameraman Billy Bitzer shot their exteriors for the Biograph Company mostly in Fort Lee from 1908 through 1912. They chose many of the same storefronts on Fort Lee's Main Street, dressed them differently and shot then at various angles for different films.

For decades it was thought that Griffith's Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) was shot on location on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It was only after a devoted group of film historians in England did a frame-by-frame analysis within the last decade that it was established that the film was in fact shot in Fort Lee at the present day site of the parking lot of the Fort Lee Post Office on Main Street. At the time, there was a storefront and alley at the location used in the film.

Among the stars of the film are sisters Lillian and Dorothy Gish as well as Harry Carey.

Remember--as does Martin Scorsese--that the gangster film was born in Fort Lee. It's one of the reasons Scorsese decided to shoot part of Goodfellas (1990) in Fort Lee as an homage to Griffith and the first American gangster film, ‘The Musketeers of Pig Alley.’

(Film file via MoMA)