Steven Spielberg’s childhood in New Jersey: the real story behind ‘The Fabelmans’

In the Oscar-nominated film The Fabelmans, it’s no secret that the real star is filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s movie-smitten childhood — from his family’s move to New Jersey, then Arizona and California.

If you’ve seen The Fabelmans, you know the New Jersey years played a major supporting role. That’s where Sammy Fabelman — Spielberg’s fictionalized version of his young self — was living when he first fell in love with movies. The rest is filmmaking history.

At this Sunday’s Academy Awards, Spielberg could earn honors for best picture, best director, and best original screenplay. The Fabelmans is also up for four other Oscars.

What you might not know is the Jersey part of the story happened right here.

Remember the house that Sammy Fabelman and mom Mitzi and dad Burt came home to after seeing The Greatest Show on Earth, the movie that changed the life of little Sammy — well, Steven — forever?

In real life, that was 267 Crystal Terrace in Haddon Township, the two-story, three-bedroom home that the Spielbergs moved to in 1952, having paid $14,000, according to National Mortgage Professional. The family lived there for five years until they moved to Arizona.

The house exterior you see in the movie isn’t the Crystal Terrace residence. The Fabelmans’ production designer Rick Carter and his crew used family photos and memories from Spielberg and his sisters to recreate the interior for the Fabelman kids to get their Hanukkah presents and Sammy to film his Lionel trains, according to Variety.

But that wasn’t the Spielbergs’ first stop in Camden County, according to Joseph McBride, film historian and author of Steven Spielberg: A Biography. For three years beginning in 1949, the family lived in the Washington Park Apartments, 219 S. 29th in Camden, said McBride, who is also a professor with San Francisco State University’s School of Cinema.

The family moved to New Jersey from Cincinnati, where Steven Spielberg was born, when his father Arnold, an electrical engineer, got a job with RCA in Camden.

The Haddon Township part of the story is better known, though even that isn’t exactly household Hollywood trivia.

“A lot of people in town are aware,” said JoAnn Carson, who now lives in the Crystal Terrace house with her husband, Dan, and their three children. “We’ve had people drive by and take pictures of the house. Not recently, but that’s happened. It would be great if Steven stopped by.”

They didn’t buy the house because of its history, said JoAnn, who works in marketing, although Dan said he has enjoyed a lot of Spielberg’s films.

“As a current middle school social studies teacher, I’m a big fan of Saving Private Ryan and the Band of Brothers series,” Dan said.

The couple didn’t watch The Fabelmans until this week and got a kick out of seeing that the inside shots did resemble their house, just as relatives had told them.

“We often wonder what bedroom was his,” JoAnn said. “There’s a story out there about a tree outside of his bedroom window that inspired something similar in the movie Poltergeist.”

For the record, biographer McBride said a former owner of the house told him about the scary tree, as well as Spielberg’s imagination-embellished wall cracks in his room that also found their way into Poltergeist.

Former Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey said Spielberg had told her about being dragged to then-Wanamaker’s in downtown Philadelphia by his mother, Leah, who made him stand under the store’s famous, huge bronze eagle while she shopped.

“He said that if he ever had analysis,” Rickey recalled, “the doctor would probably tell him that his fear of standing under the outsize Wanamaker’s Eagle probably led to many scenes in Jurassic Park.”

JoAnn Carson thinks the filmmaker’s time here must have left a mark.

“It seemed like he was very inspired living here, even if it was a short amount of time,” she said, “just from the movie he saw and all that.”

That part of the story is well-known, and it’s in The Fabelmans.

Tuesday, Camden County officials dedicated a plaque honoring Spielberg at the site of the former historic Westmont Theatre where many believe the filmmaker had his first and highly inspirational cinematic experience. The building now houses a Planet Fitness, but the theater marquee remains.

“The Westmont Theatre is an iconic location here in Camden County that has played a part in so many of our childhoods, including that of Steven Spielberg,” said county commissioner director Louis Cappelli Jr. “We wanted to honor Spielberg and his connection to South Jersey by installing a commemorative placard at the site where the Westmont Theatre once stood.”

The Westmont, a first-run theater, was not far from the Spielberg home so it’s likely the future filmmaker went there at some point.

Whether it was his first is a bit inconclusive. In 2009 in his acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, Spielberg told of seeing The Greatest Show on Earth with his father at a theater in Philadelphia, leading some cinephiles to speculate it was the Boyd Theater, a former Center City movie palace. Biographer McBride said his research had suggested the viewing might have been in Camden. Spielberg, he said, has a history of changing some details of his life.

Here are details local officials say they are sure about: Spielberg was an avid cub scout who later showed generosity to the Scouts in part based on his time in Haddon Township. He attended Thomas Edison Elementary School. Young Steven did his Hebrew school studies with the late Rabbi Albert Lewis of Temple Beth Sholom, according to McBride. His family were congregation members.

And on whatever side of the Delaware River, it was here that a young boy watched his first movie and it ignited the inspiration for him to become one of America’s most celebrated filmmakers.

On Sunday night, we will see how the film about that boy — The Fabelmans — fares on the 95th Academy Awards.