Archives West Finding Aid

This series contains a variety of miscellaneous papers documenting Nell Shipman's life and work. They include her baptismal and death certificates, a list of film and publishing credits she compiled, press clippings, and her obituaries. The press clippings are in two forms: loose photocopies in Box 1, Folders 17-28, and originals pasted in her Pressbook (see Box 19). Folders 17-28 also contain clippings not found in the Pressbook. The clippings in this series are clippings Nell Shipman saved or collected herself and date mainly from 1925 to 1938. Another collection of newspaper clippings about her, compiled by Professor Tom Trusky, can be found in his papers (MSS 99). The Trusky collection contains older material, including clippings from the Priest River newspaper in the 1920s.

Folders 11 and 12 in Box 1, called "Keepsakes," contain papers Nell Shipman kept in a shoebox, separate from the rest of her files. Folder 11 contains items from the 1930s relating to her interest in mysticism and the occult, including letters from her friend Dorothy Yost and her son Barry Shipman. Folder 12 consists of personal papers, such as a 1925 Christmas card from her Idaho friend, Belle Angstadt, tributes to Amelia Earhart, drawings by her son Charles Douglas Ayers and others, and poetry she collected. A typewritten document in Folder 12 entitled "Accompanying Script: A Thorough, Personal, Descriptive Typewritten Analysis" (1951) is a 500-word psychological/character analysis of a "woman who has been forcibly developed and matured by work...." Written by Nell, about Nell?

Nell Shipman's commonplace book (Box 18) was a daily planner into which she pasted a few clippings and made scattered notes. Among the loose items removed from the book and placed in Box 1, Folder 15 are a poetic eulogy to Amerigo Serrao and a homemade birthday card presented to her by her production company in 1920. A photo of the birthday party is print number 1016 in the photo collection.

The accounts and correspondence relating to the Barham-Jevons estates (Box 1, Folders 34-35) contain information about inheritances from Barham and Jevons relatives in England. She seems to have received distributions in 1936 and in 1958. Barry Shipman recalls that she used her 1936 inheritance to support her unsuccessful Florida venture with Sir John Brunton. Letters in Folder 35 reveal that she planned to use the 1958 distributions for a Florida venture as well.

Among the other items in this series are her 1929 California drivers license (Box 1, Folder 5), a mailing envelope (postmarked 1920) with the logo of Nell Shipman Productions (Folder 33), reminiscences of Charles A. Taylor (with whom she toured in Alaska, Folder 41), and biographical material about Charles Austin Ayers, Ernest Shipman, and Amerigo Serrao.

Perhaps the most poignant item in this series is a 1963 letter from the Motion Picture Relief Fund rejecting her application for a pension (Box 1, Folder 7). "The major part of your writing since 1929 has not been used by the studios," was the brutal but accurate conclusion of the relief board, disqualifying her from consideration.

Both business and personal letters are represented in Nell Shipman's general correspondence files. Most of the letters date from either the 1930s or 1960s; very few date from any other time. Most of the letters from the 1930s are of a business nature; the correspondents include agents and publishers and they pertain mainly to her writing projects. The letters from the 1960s are more varied, a mixture of personal and business. Among the correspondents in the 1960s are friends whom she enlisted to help in her writing and promotional projects, relatives, literary agents, and, in the last few years of her life, silent film buffs who discovered her in Cabazon, California. Letters to and from her children, spanning the dates 1933-1969, are found in Series 3.

Among the notable items in the correspondence is a telegram from Amelia Earhart (1937) asking Nell to telephone her. Also present are approximately 25 letters between Nell and Earhart's husband, George Palmer Putnam, written between 1930 and 1939. Putnam and Shipman collaborated on several projects (including the novel Hot Oil), and their letters discuss their work. (Shipman also discusses her work with Putnam in many letters to Barry Shipman in Series 3.) Another prominent figure represented by a file of correspondence is literary agent Ann Watkins, who represented Shipman between 1929 and 1934. In the miscellaneous business file (Box 3, Folder 34) there is a letter from Louella Parsons dated 1931 inviting Nell to drop by her office and visit.

The correspondence with Dial Press (mainly with Lincoln MacVeagh and Grenville Vernon) chronicles the history behind the publication of Shipman's books Get the Woman (1930), Abandoned Trails (1932), and Kurly Kew and the Tree Princess (1930). Letters from J.K.Gordon Magee and Frank Ibbotson in the Fall of 1931 document their attempt to see Get the Woman translated to the big screen. Correspondence with McCall's Magazine and Good Housekeeping reveal objections to some of Nell's story lines. After serializing Get the Woman (as "M'sieu Sweetheart") in 1930, McCall's considered another Shipman story called "The Snow Mother," but found part of the story line objectionable. McCall's editor Otto Wiese did not mind that the protagonist's husband ran a gambling show, "but the fact that he was running women, and sold his wife into the trade, is quite a little too bald for us." Good Housekeeping had similar problems when considering Abandoned Trails for serialization in 1931. Their editorial policy would not allow a lead character to "live in sin."

There is only one original letter in the collection that dates from Nell Shipman's silent film career. It is a letter from James Oliver Curwood dated 1919 in which he calls her decision to sever her contracts with him the biggest mistake of her life. This letter was presented to Boise State University in 1989 by Mildred Stobie, who discovered it as a child among the ruins of Nell's movie camp in north Idaho.

Nell's various writing and promotional projects between 1935 and 1960, when she lived with Amerigo Serrao, are best documented in her correspondence with Barry Shipman (Series 3). However, there is one small file of letters in this series written by Serrao in 1937 in his unofficial capacity as her agent. This series also contains quite a few letters Serrao sent to Nell in the last few months of his life, while he was in New York trying to arrange financing for another of their unfulfilled projects, and a special file of tributes and letters of sympathy Nell received after he died in November 1960 (Box 13, Folder 12).

Aside from her children (Series 3), the largest files of correspondence in the 1960s belong to Archibald Stone McColl, a young Army officer Nell befriended in Washington, D.C.; Georgia Burre McManis, a typist who acted as a literary agent for her; Vincent Sorey, a composer and concert violinist with whom she collaborated on several projects; and Thomas Fulbright, a silent film historian.

During the last few years of her life, Nell Shipman renewed contacts with old friends and acquaintances from her days in Idaho. Those represented by letters in this series include Russell Bankson, Sylvia Gumaer Burwell, Jim Parsons, Lloyd Peters, and Loie Pierson. Lloyd Peters' work on Lionhead Lodge (1967), a book about his youthful experiences working with Nell Shipman at Priest Lake, helped spur Nell along in the writing of her own autobiography. In the 1960s Nell also corresponded with a number of film buffs and historians. Those include Canadians Hye Bossin and Gordon Sparling and Americans Murray Summers, Roi Uselton, and Thomas Fulbright. Fulbright became a frequent correspondent; Nell's daughter Daphne once suggested that Nell marry him.

Nell Shipman kept letters about some of her plays, novels, and stories, in files along with her typescripts rather than in her general correspondence files. Those letters have been kept with the typescripts in Series 5 and 6 and are generally filed in folders labeled Research, Related Material, or Correspondence.

This series contains letters exchanged between Nell Shipman and her children, Barry Shipman, Charles Douglas Ayers, and Daphne Ayers Feldman, from 1933 to 1969. Because so many of the letters were written on paper that is now very brittle, researchers are asked to consult photocopies, which have been arranged in chronological order and placed in eight notebooks.

By far the largest body of correspondence is between Nell Shipman and her oldest son, Barry Shipman (1912-1984). The earliest surviving letters between them date from 1933, when Barry lived in the mountains at Big Bear, California. Nell at that time still lived in California, too, but she soon left for New York, where she went to work as a writer and story developer for George Palmer Putnam, who recently had become head of Paramount Pictures' editorial board. Some of Nell's and Barry's earliest letters discuss mysticism (to which Barry was much attracted at the time), but for the most part, the letters discuss Nell's writing projects, her promotional ideas, plans for making movies herself, and family and personal affairs over the course of four decades. There are many more letters in the file written by Nell than by Barry. A few letters between Barry Shipman and Amerigo Serrao are also included in these files, in their appropriate chronological order.

The letters chronicle Nell's gradual separation from Charles Austin Ayers, her life with Amerigo Serrao in New York, Florida, California, and Washington, D.C., and her final years in Cabazon, California. They also reflect her often-precarious financial situation and the difficulties in providing a settled home life for the twins Charles and Daphne when they were children. Occasional letters to Barry Shipman from Charles Austin Ayers, Amerigo Serrao, and others are also included with the photocopies, as well as a few letters by Nell's eldest granddaughter, Nina Shipman, and her children's spouses. When Barry Shipman turned forty years old (in 1952), he wrote a long letter to Nell chronicling the decades of his life. Though written in a terse, breezy style, the letter is invaluable in tracing Nell and Barry's movements from 1912 to 1952.

Among the names mentioned frequently in Nell's letters are George Palmer Putnam; Putnam's wife Amelia Earhart; literary agents Ann Watkins, Jean Wick, and Nan Blair; Nell's friends Shelly Johnson and his ex-wife, Thelma Robertson; Billy and Marion Colvin, old friends from Nell's repertory days who also worked with her in Florida; adventure novelist Felix Riesenberg; writer and collaborator Philip Hurn ("Fippi"); movie producers Emanuel Cohen (of Paramount), Larry (J. Laurence) Wickland, Charles Glett, and Sir John Brunton; Captain George A. Baynes, of Eastern Service Studios; screenwriter Rex Taylor and cinematographer Joseph Walker (old friends from moviemaking days); niece Pat Shipman and her husband Dick Diaz; and the sculptor Luella Varney Serrao (Amerigo Serrao's mother). She lived in New York in the 1930s, too, and Nell and Amerigo helped look after her in her declining years.

This series contains autobiographical writings and fragments by Nell Shipman, both published and unpublished, and some non-fiction essays.

The two typescripts of Nell's autobiography, The Silent Screen and My Talking Heart, vary little from the text published by Boise State University. These are relatively clean typescripts, made after the writing was done. The first was apparently typed by Nell Shipman herself; the second by her daughter-in-law, Beulah Shipman ("Bool"). The typescripts are accompanied by letters Nell wrote in search of publishers, as well as letters to libraries and other places in her attempts to pin down details of fact. Also in the file is a two-page fragment of a possible sequel (Folder 19), recounting an incident involving Barry Shipman at the Mission Play in San Gabriel, California, sometime in the late 1920s.

"A Call to Arms for the Scenario Writers" (1912) is the earliest composition in the series, followed by "Me" (1919), a short autobiographical sketch. "A Call to Arms" was published in West Coast Magazine and "Me" was published in Photoplay. Both are represented only by photocopies of the published articles (Folder 22 and 3, respectively). So too is "This Little Bear Went Hollywood," a memoir of her bear Brownie, published in Good Housekeeping in 1931 (Folder 15). There is also a published version of "The Movie That Couldn't Be Screened" (Atlantic Monthly, 1925) as well as a second photocopy of part of it, annotated by Nell Shipman in her own hand, naming individuals only vaguely identified in the original text (Folder 5).

Nell Shipman wrote at least four versions of the story of her sojourn in Spain, 1926-27. There is a typescript journal covering the dates January 1, 1927 through March 24, 1927 (Folder 12) and three other reminiscences entitled "Borrowed Castles" (Folder 10), "Galicia Goes By (Folder 11), and "Memoirs of Spain" (Folders 13 and 14).

In 1930 Nell, Barry, and Charles Austin Ayers drove from Taos, New Mexico, to Yellowstone National Park, where Nell and Charles caught a train to Seattle. The story of their difficult auto trip across Wyoming's Continental Divide and their visit to Yellowstone is recounted in "Red Gate" (Folder 7). Nell and Charles' subsequent cruise from Seattle to Juneau is told in "Sentimental Journey" (Folder 8).

"Fade In" (Folder 1), written in 1962, is a rambling reminiscence of several incidents during the filming of Girl From God's Country, God's Country and the Woman, and Back To God's Country, and mentions William Clune, Louis B. Mayer, Charles A. Taylor, Rollin Sturgeon, and her bears Big Bessie and Brownie, among others. "Sleep Deep" (Folder 9) is a poetic eulogy of Amerigo Serrao, and "Guess Who's Grateful" (Folder 2) is a Thanksgiving Day prayer Nell composed in 1967. "I am thankful for what has been bestowed upon me through association with the Lively Arts, even if in small portions," she wrote. "To work on the fringe of the magic world of make-believe is reason for sincere thanksgiving."

Series 5 contains typescripts and drafts of ten novels, representing work Nell Shipman did between 1925 and 1966. These are all unpublished works; apparently she did not retain typescripts of those that were published. Many of the stories contained within these novels also appear as short stories in Series 6.

The earliest typescript in the series is called Pirate Girl. According to Barry Shipman, Nell wrote it at Old Lyme, Connecticut, during the summer of 1925, her first summer in the East with Charles Austin Ayers. Pirate Girl is a swashbuckling story of the Spanish Main, foreshadowing her imminent move to Florida and then Spain itself.

The typescript entitled Abandoned Trails is not the typescript of the novel as published (1931), but the first third of the original story, which was cut by the editors. Along with the typescript is correspondence relating to it and the book as published, including comments and pre-publication suggestions by those who read the manuscript.

Edge of Beyond and Heaven Casts a Long Shadow are both novels with mystical themes. During the early 1930s, both Nell and Barry became entranced by mysticism and Eastern spirituality, in part through the influence of their friend, Dorothy Yost, a prolific Hollywood screenwriter. Nell wrote several stories with a mystical element, including these novels. Both are set in territory she knew well, northern Idaho and eastern Washington. Edge of Beyond is the older typescript of the two, probably dating back to the 1930s, though it appears she made changes and additions in later years (including the title page). Heaven Casts a Long Shadow dates from the 1960s. It was Nell's last major project before she turned to her autobiography. The typescript is accompanied by research correspondence, including letters to and from Peter Van Gelder of the Spokane Mountaineers and noted raptor specialist Morley Nelson. A typescript entitled High Frontier (Box 6) is closely related to Heaven Casts a Long Shadow; some of the pages are actually headed with the latter title. Among the other stories Nell wrote with mystical themes are her Borderline Tales (Box 17). They too were set in the same locale and involve many of the same characters.

Bitterroot was also set in the Pacific Northwest. Nell Shipman seems to have worked on it just before Heaven Casts a Long Shadow. "It is safe to say there is not an incident in 'Bitter' which was not experienced in real life or the 'fiction' developing from that life," she wrote to the publisher Doubleday in 1965. "So, I am afraid, I must plead guilty of plagiarizing myself and must continue, at the end of a long and eventful life, to so do."

Little Lost Lady and The Naked North (also titled Woman Against the Wilderness) are Alaska novels. Little Lost Lady appears to be the older of the two, written ca. 1940-1942. Portions of the typescript have been removed; Nell Shipman appears to have renumbered them and inserted them into The Naked North. Both tales involve a stock company actress in early 20th-century Alaska. The Road to God's Country is another Alaska novel, set during World War II and loosely formed around the building of the Alcan Highway. One of the protagonists is a young stock company actress, and several of the characters from Little Lost Lady and The Naked North reappear as "old timers."

Feather From the Right Wing is an anti-communist novel, related to the scripts "Face of the Enemy" and "The Fifth American" (Box 11). Nell Shipman transformed those 1950s screenplays into a novel in 1961, largely as a tribute to Amerigo Serrao. The typescript is accompanied by quite a bit of correspondence documenting her unsuccessful efforts to get it published.

More than 120 stories, plays, scripts, film scenarios, and film treatments are found in Series 6. Some are represented by more than one version, and some are accompanied by correspondence. With but one exception, noted below, none of her pre-1925 work is represented here. The scripts for the films she made in the 1910s and 20s apparently have all been lost.

The earliest item in the series is a shooting script, with camera directions, for a proposed silent film entitled "The Last Empire." Set in Cuba, it is the rare surviving example of Nell Shipman's early screenwriting and likely was inspired by a trip to Cuba, ca. 1915-16. Other early works include a pageant play, "Florida" (1928); an opera libretto also from Florida entitled "Crown of Conquest;" and two radio plays from 1932, "Mann the Mystic" and "Your Own Story Hour: My Night of Terror." The latest item in the series is a proposal for a Lassie television program (1967). In between are all kinds of works, many undated.

North Idaho and the wild country of the Pacific Northwest feature in a number of stories, notably the "Borderline Tales" (Box 17). Many of these stories came out of her novels, particularly Heaven Casts a Long Shadow. They appear to date from the 1960s.

Shipman's fascination with the sea is as evident in this series as her love of wilderness. "Blow the Man Down" (1934) is one of her earliest sea stories, a film scenario coauthored in New York with her friend, the prolific novelist Felix Riesenberg.

"Grand Bahama" (1936) is a proposal, in letter form, she drew up for Sir John Brunton, who hoped to produced films in Florida and the Bahamas. (A 1936 magazine profile of Brunton is contained in the Pressbook in Series 1.) "Jungle Ship" was a project about exploration that she worked on for several years, offering it as a radio play as early as 1937 and then developing it as a film proposal a few years later. A shooting script is included in the collection. In 1945 Nell Shipman recorded portions of "Jungle Ship" onto a 16-inch disc. The recording has been transferred to a tape cassette for research use (Series 7). "The Flying Fox" is another version of "Jungle Ship."

From time to time Shipman promoted the idea she called the "Aquadrome," a theater combining motion pictures with live water shows. She floated the idea most enthusiastically in the early 1960s and enlisted an engineer-friend to help design it. Another idea from the 1960s was "Center 16," a chain of small movie theaters located in shopping centers. Her proposal went nowhere at the time, but within a decade the idea took root in suburban shopping malls across America.

Nell Shipman grasped the dramatic possibilities of television early on, and in 1949, while living in Virginia, wrote several one-act plays intended for the new medium. Those titles include "Center Door Fancy," "First One In," and "The Girl and the Monster." She proposed more television programs in the brochure "Country Beyond the River" (1952).

Current events and newspaper stories often inspired stories. A classified ad for a diamond ring prompted the story, "A Great Tomorrow" (1936). "Refugee Ship" (1939) was based upon the plight of the refugee Jews on the ship St. Louis, who were denied entry at many ports. "White Ambush" (1940) tells the story of the Finns who turned back the Soviet invasion of their land in the Winter War of 1939-40. There are several other World War II-inspired works as well. During the 1950s Nell Shipman wrote at least three anti-Communist screenplays, "Face of the Enemy" (two versions, 1950 and 1952) and "The Fifth American" (1955). She transformed them into a novel, Feather from the Right Wing, in 1961.

Wherever she lived, Nell Shipman was quick to absorb the local culture and feature it in her stories. While at Provincetown, Massachusetts, she wrote "Cape Cod Beachhead" (1944). A story of tobacco, "The Golden Road," dates from her Virginia days (1948). Her stay with friends in New Jersey in the early 1960s prompted "The Guns of '76" and "Guns on the Delaware," the latter production to be staged in her Aquadrome. While in New England during the early 1960s she wrote "Rape of the Lily," a play about the siege of Louisbourg at the outset of the French and Indian War. Quite a few stories were set on the sidewalks of New York, including "Hurdy Gurdy" (1961) and "Everything Comes Out Verdi." She envisioned the latter as a musical comedy and enlisted the aid of her friend, composer Vincent Sorey, to write the music. Shipman and Sorey seem to have collaborated on several projects (as indicated in their Correspondence file, Box 3), including the song "Nakome," which was published in 1961 by Metropolitan Music Company. And all through the 1960s she promoted a work about the history of wine called "The Golden Grape" for production in California, possibly in San Francisco Bay on the Aquadrome.

Nell Shipman's biggest film credit after the collapse of her own studio at Priest Lake was as coauthor of the story for the motion picture Wings in the Dark (1935), starring Myrna Loy and Cary Grant. A "release dialogue script" is included in this series, even though Nell Shipman did not write the final script of the film itself. In a letter after the movie was released, she said it was a "nice picture and will never hurt anyone's feelings and the flying is quite wonderful but there is nothing about it that I can see which relates it to the original theme, the over-coming of a dreadful handicap through the loving service of a dog." This script was not part of the original collection; it was purchased from a movie memorabilia dealer and added to the collection.

With the exception of "Jungle Ship" and "The Golden Road," these tapes of Nell Shipman reading date from her years at Cabazon, California, 1967-1970. "Doraleen and Fuzzy Vague" and "The Longest Hour" were fairy tales originally written by Barry Shipman for his daughter Nina during World War II. "Fig Tree John" is an Indian tale Nell was reading for her niece, Pat Shipman Diaz, who had become blind. The other tapes from the 1960s are some of Nell Shipman's "Borderline Tales." Barry Shipman made this comment when he gave these tapes to Boise State University: "Hearing the dramatization of Nell's words, especially in 'The Golden Road,' is evidence that she wrote words to be performed; Nell's writing talent, like poetry, seems better when 'heard' than 'read'" (June 7, 1990).

Boxes 22 through 25 contain original letters, scripts, stories, etc. that are in fragile condition (brittle paper). Photocopies have been placed in the appropriate files within the main collection for patron use. Also contained in these boxes are carbons of certain titles made by Nell Shipman.

The Nell Shipman collection contains approximately 400 images of Nell Shipman, her family and associates, and places where she lived and worked, including stills from several of her movies. Most of them were donated by Barry Shipman, in the form of 35 mm negatives he made from contemporary prints in his possession. Also included in the collection are copy prints that Professor Tom Trusky obtained from other libraries, archives, and private individuals during his research on Nell Shipman.

Boise State University can provide copy prints of those images donated to us by Barry Shipman, however we cannot make copies of photos that came from other sources. For further information, consult an archivist in the Special Collections Department.

Each image has been assigned a photo number. For reference use, copies of all the images have been arranged in the following ten categories:

Nell Shipman and her family (portraits)

Associates and animals

Scenes at Priest Lake, Idaho

A Bear, a Boy, and a Dog

Something New

The Girl from God's Country

The Grubstake

Little Dramas of the Big Places

Other films and productions

Shipman-Curwood Productions album

Some photos relating to Tom Trusky's activities both researching and promoting the films of Nell Shipman can be found in MSS 99, the Tom Trusky collection. Copies of Nell Shipman's films are available on videotape and at the Simplot-Micron Instructional Technology Center at Boise State University.