November 11, 2002

SILENT FILM STAR NELL SHIPMAN FLIES AGAIN IN MAGAZINE ARTICLE

When the editors of a United Airlines in-flight magazine decided to run a feature article on pioneering Idaho filmmaker and actress Nell Shipman, they turned to Boise State University for photographs of the silent film star and to doublecheck their facts.

The article, "Reel Women," is featured in the November issue of United First, the entertainment preview magazine for first-class passengers on United flights worldwide.

The article features photos of Shipman from the Idaho Film Collection at Boise State and from the university’s Shipman Archive in the Albertsons Library. Tom Trusky, director of the Hemingway Western Studies Center at Boise State and a Shipman expert, also doublechecked the article by writer Liz Seymour for accuracy.

"Tom Trusky was extremely helpful. He sent us quite a few images and we think the article turned out really great," said Vickie McClintock, art director for United First. McClintock said she contacted Trusky after conducting an Internet search on Shipman and coming up with the Idaho Film Collection Web site and Trusky’s name.

The United First article describes Shipman as "the godmother of no-nonsense heroines" such as Sigourney Weaver in Alien, Kate Winslet in Titanic, Helen Hunt in Twister and Franka Potente in The Bourne Identity. "... [Shipman’s] courage, determination and just plain guts live on in a generation of actresses who take matters, on screen and off, into their own capable hands," the article concludes.

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.

Trusky first became interested in Shipman’s life and works about 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. He is currently compiling Letters from God's Country: Nell Shipman Correspondence, 1918-1970, to be published in 2003.

It’s especially appropriate that Shipman be recognized in United’s magazine because she was very interested in aviation, Trusky said. Shipman wrote and starred in The Girl from God’s Country, a lost 1920 film that involved a trans-Pacific flight. Shipman was also a friend of the famous pilot Amelia Earheart; correspondence between the two is featured in Trusky’s upcoming book. In addition, Shipman co-wrote the screenplay for the 1934 Paramount film Wings in the Dark starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy.

Trusky said he is delighted that interest in Shipman and her work is continuing to grow. "Nell Shipman was ahead of her time in many respects, and people are recognizing that," he said.

-30-

Tom Trusky

English

426-1999

Janelle Brown

communications and marketing

426-1790