Film Review The Greatest Unknown Jersey Shore Beach Resort By Rick Geffken

The Greatest Unknown Jersey Shore Beach Resort

By Rick Geffken

Festival Award Winner for best Home Grown Documentary Short – New Jersey History, novice film-maker Chris Brenner’s Destinations Past: Highland Beach played before enthusiastic Atlantic City crowds at the 2017 Garden State Film Festival.  Brenner’s movie skillfully weaves the story of William Sandlass Jr., who opened his Highland Beach Excursion Resort on the then mostly remote Sandy Hook peninsula in 1888. The film makes a convincing case that this day-trippers delight was a key component to the changing recreational patterns of the late 19th century Americans, and helped “launch the Jersey Shore tourism business.”

Brenner employs century-old color postcards, home movies clips and family vacation snapshots, as well as remarkably crisp century-old black and white photographs - common enough historical documentary elements. But this thoughtful this little film makes especially compelling use of these visuals as it recounts an important time and an influential place overlooked by New Jersey historians.

 The 42-minute production by the Fair Haven New Jersey native reveals William Sandlass as one of the first to understand and exploit the trend for short term vacations the fin de siècle middle class was just beginning to enjoy. Before Highland Beach’s Victorian styled buildings were built in what is now Sea Bright, the more famous Shore resorts of Long Branch and Atlantic City catered mainly to upper class folks more likely to spend a week or so enjoying the amenities at those legendary spots along our coast. 

 To entice working class folks with more limited means, Sandlass filled his resort with inexpensive amusements like a merry-go-round, an ice cream and soda parlor, two music clubs, an airdrome outdoor theater, a photo studio, bathing pavilions, bath houses, a waterfront hotel and restaurant, and an outdoor food and drink emporium. The Highland Beach Resort was a natural draw for city dwellers, nestled as it was between the Atlantic Ocean and the Shrewsbury River, a mere 50 yards apart. Huge crowds flocked to both the coastal and river beaches Sandlass filled with boardwalks and pavilions. He built it and come they did, sometimes 20,000 in a day.

A film clip of a Jersey Central Rail Road train chugging through Highland Beach – “All aboard!” is followed by photographs, maps, and contemporary advertisements presented in the familiar Ken Burns pan and scan effect showing the people, places, andparties of a lively eight-decade scene.

Highland Beach’s establishing shots position the resort as part of the post-Civil War Industrial Revolution changing American culture. Historical and contemporary aerial photographs of Sandy Hook immediately make clear why Sandlass’s resort was advertised to Manhattanites as “the nearest available beach on the New Jersey Coast.” As true as those claims were, Brenner uses a remarkable little film clip to illustrate Coney Island’s influence on what Sandlass built at the Jersey Shore. Delightful frames from the famed Brooklyn amusement area show well-dressed riders on a “Gravity Rail Road,” the same kind of folks propelled along at “the reckless speed of 6 mph” at Highland Beach a few years later. LaMarcus Thompson, the father of modern roller coaster, designed both thrill rides - the Highland Beach version in 1889, just five years after the Coney Island attraction. 

 Absent from Highland Beach are the ubiquitous talking heads explaining the obvious, a frequently overused documentary technique. Brenner wisely chose to omit “experts” and simply allows contemporary images to guide us through the resort’s history. This narrative flow compliments viewers’ intelligence.   

Highland Beach makes ample use of the then state-of-the-art German lithography postcards, prints from Frank Leslie's Illustrated (the 1899 America’s Cup race was held just off Highland Beach), glass plate photographs, and old home movies and snapshots from his father’s time working as a bartender and a “Beach Patrol” boy at the resort. The late Ted Brenner was the source of dozens of stories about the grand resort, and the inspiration for his son’s year long, basement film project to portray what is long gone.

This film is all the more remarkable because family man Chris Brenner madeit alone while working as a travelling representative for a major technology company, and participating in various civic organizations in Fair Haven, only a few miles from the former site of Highland Beach. Brenner may be a “novice film-maker,” but this debut rivals professional documentaries.

 The brief clip from The Unchanging Sea, a 1910 Mary Pickford vehicle, is a nice surprise. The noted director D. W. Griffith shot at least four films in and around Highland Beach. Pickford has multiple scenes near what looks like Sandlass’s bath houses, although some film historians suggest it was shot on California’s coast. Regardless, we’re made to understand that the fledgling film industry which had roots in Fort Lee, New Jersey, used the Highland Beach Resort location more than once. This now mostly-forgotten place was well-known in its day.

Brenner’s own understated voiceover allows the viewer to understand the story of a carefree retreat, fast fading in memories, with but a single remnant left, William Sandlass’s House itself. Speaking with the ease of someone who knows his subject well, Brenner employs the conversational style of one old friend to another – “Remember when?”

The musical soundtrack features period-correct old-timey music (the perfect, 1902 “In the Good Old Summer Time”), jazz and ragtime standards (Scott Joplin), and 1940s hits (Duke Ellington, the Andrew Sisters). You’re sweetly seduced by the unfolding story of Highland Beach, and quickly immersed in the tumultuous times it witnessed – the Great War, the Jazz Age, Prohibition, the Depression, World War II, the Eisenhower post-War years, and finally, the early 1960s. The evocative soundtrack enhances rarely seen images, providing vital context to the 75-year run of the Highland Beach Resort.

Highland Beach was far more than simply a popular diversion from summer heat and humidity for city dwellers. Public and private officials were forced to rethink transportation infrastructure near it. The Central Railroad of New Jersey, in response to the massive numbers of people heading south from New York to the Shore, abandoned its long-used ferry terminals on Sandy Hook and built a new pier in Atlantic Highlands. The 1892 so-called criss-cross bridge connected those rail lines to Highland Beach across the Shrewsbury River. Eventually, New Jersey State Highway 36 was constructed to help funnel new-fangled automobile traffic over a newer 1932 bridge.

You can find Brenner’s award-winning film at www.destinationspast.com; or via YouTube, by searching for “Highland Beach.” After you’ve enjoyed his first, you can view Brenner’s latest effort about the Gilded Age McCarter Family estate called “Rumson Hill.” We’ll be looking forward to more stellar work from Chris Brenner’s Navesink Studios in the future.