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TRUSKY SEARCHES FOR GRAVE OF FILM STAR DURING TRIP TO CANADA Australian actor Ronald William Byram, who perished during the filming of Nell Shipman’s “Back to God’s Country,” can be seen in some frames of the film’s final cut. Other frames, probably shot on Hollywood set, feature Byram’s replacement in the film. More than 80 years after a tragic death marred the filming of Nell Shipman’s silent epic, “Back to God's Country,” in a remote area north of Edmonton, Alberta, Boise State University English professor Tom Trusky is returning to the area to try to find the grave of the actor who perished. Trusky, who has devoted a good portion of his career to researching Shipman’s life and work and tracking down her films from as far away as England, hopes to find the grave of Ronald William Byram, an Australian actor who traveled to Canada in 1919 for the starring role in Shipman’s new film. Trusky is traveling to Edmonton later this week for a screening of Shipman’s “Back to God's Country,” sponsored by the Idaho Film Collection at Boise State and the University of Alberta. During his visit, Trusky will also present lectures and present an exhibition of the works by the deaf, self-taught Idaho artist James Castle. “It’s a fascinating and tragic story,” said Trusky about Byram, who contracted pneumonia during the first few weeks of shooting “Back to God's Country” in sub-zero conditions in March 1919 at Lesser Slave Lake north of Edmonton. The 32-year-old actor was taken to Edmonton and died on April 22 in the Royal Alexander Hospital in Edmonton. Shipman replaced Byram with an American actor, Wheeler Oakman. But according to Trusky, glimpses of the doomed Australian actor can be seen in dramatic dog sled scenes in the film’s finale. Trusky postulates that the frames with Byram were included in “Back to God’s Country” because the action could not be re-created on Hollywood sets during final editing. “Back to God's Country” is the earliest surviving feature film by the Canadian-born Shipman and went on to become an international sensation. But until now, the film’s original leading man has been all but forgotten. Trusky hopes to change that by finding Byram’s grave and memorializing his contribution to Shipman’s historic film. While he has learned the actor was buried in Edmonton, the exact whereabouts are still a mystery. Trusky has received some clues about where the actor might be buried from contacts at an Edmonton hospital, from Canadian historian Gordon Sparling, and from producers at Great Northwest Productions in Edmonton, who interviewed Trusky for a documentary film on Shipman that will be released later this year. He’ll follow up on those leads during his stay in the area. “I'm looking forward to continuing my search. It would be very fitting to be able to find where Byram is buried,” Trusky said. Trusky first became interested in the pioneering filmmaker Nell Shipman nearly 20 years ago and conducted a search over a number of years for her films, which had been presumed lost and destroyed. He recovered five films from as far away as England; many have since been released on video. In 1987, Trusky edited and published Shipman’s autobiography, “The Silent Screen & My Talking Heart,” as part of Boise State's Western Writers Series. Trusky, the world’s leading authority on Shipman, has also given introductory lectures at Shipman retrospectives in France, Switzerland, Italy, the United States and Canada. He is currently compiling “Letters from God’s Country: Nell Shipman Correspondence, 1918-1970.” According to Trusky, interest in Shipman and her work is skyrocketing. “She was ahead of her time in many respects, and people are recognizing that,” he said. Shipman strongly believed in location shooting and independent filmmaking, he noted. Her films featured women heroes, and she supported humane treatment of animals in films. “She was sensitive about the environment and the sacredness of the land, and this was in 1920,” Trusky added. Shipman was born in Victoria and grew up in Seattle. She embarked on a vaudeville career as a young girl. After finding success with the melodrama “Back to God's Country,” Shipman brought a film crew and a menagerie of wild and domestic animals to the remote shores of Priest Lake in northern Idaho. At Lionhead Lodge, her wilderness film studio, Shipman battled weather and financial disasters to create films starring kind animals and strong women Her attempts to create films on location in that wild and isolated land resulted in events that were as dramatic, and ultimately more tragic, than any of her films. She died in 1970. Additional information about Shipman and her work can be found at the Idaho Film Collection's on-line archive at www.boisestate.edu/hemingway/film.htm. Contact: Media Contact:
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