Nell Shipman (born Helen Foster-Barham; October 25, 1892 – January 23, 1970) was a Canadian actress, writer, and director who was active in silent film in the 1910s and 1920s. She used "the girl from God's country" as her sobriquet after starring in God's Country and the Woman.
Born in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1892, her family moved to Seattle, Washington, in 1904. She became interested in performing arts while on a family vacation in the United Kingdom and joined a vaudeville group in 1905. While working in a play she met and married film producer Ernest Shipman and the couple moved to California.
Shipman wrote and directed a few films before receiving a contract with Vitagraph Studios. After doing ten films with Vitagraph she formed her own company and adapted James Oliver Curwood's Wapi the Walrus into Back to God's Country. During the production of the film she had an affair with Bert Van Tuyle and divorced Ernst. Van Tuyle and Shipman formed another company and produced a few films, including The Grub-Stake, before going bankrupt. She attempted to revive her filmmaking career and moved across the United States until her death.
Early life
Helen Foster Barham was born in Victoria, British Columbia, on 25 October 1892, to Arnold and Rose Barham. Her parents were born in the United Kingdom and moved to Canada a few years before her birth. In 1904, her family moved to Seattle, Washington.
During a family trip to the United Kingdom Foster-Barham decided to become a performer after seeing a theatre and started taking acting lessons before joining a vaudeville group in 1905. She performed in Jesse Lasky's play The Pianophiends in 1907, and was the lead in Charles Taylor's play The Girl From Alaska in 1909. From 1908 to 1910, she worked with the National Stock Company, Taylor Stock Company, and Sutton Players. These companies took across the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
From an early age, she developed a respect towards animals. She was passionate about animal rights and advocated them in Hollywood. She developed her private sanctuary, containing more than 200 animals.
Early career
At age 18, Foster-Barham was cast in a production of Rex Beach's The Barrier, which was being managed by Ernest Shipman. On 25 August 1910, she married Shipman, with whom she had Barry Shipman; she was his fourth wife. The couple moved to California in 1910, where she then worked as a screenwriter. She wrote and star in The Ball of Yarn in 1912, but was critical of its quality stating that it was so bad "that even Ernie couldn't book it". The first film she directed was Outwitted by Billy.
From 1912 to 1917, Shipman sold scripts to Selig Polyscope Company, Australasian Films, the American Film Company, the Palo Alto Film Corporation, and Universal Pictures. Shipman advertised her writing ability in trade magazines as she understood "the technicalities and limitations of the camera". She turned her film Under the Crescent into a 277-page novel with 58 stills from the film.
Rollin S. Sturgeon, the director of God's Country and the Woman, brought Shipman onto the project to help with the script with no pay. This was the first Vitagraph Studios film that she acted in and she used "the girl from God's country" as a publicity sobriquet. Vitagraph gave her an acting contract and loaned her out to Famous Players–Lasky for The Black Wolf (1917). During her time at Vitagraph from 1915 to 1918, she played major roles in at least ten feature films. Gayne Whitman starred alongside Shipman in four films directed by William Wolbert. At the end of Shipman's contract with Vitagraph she was earning $300 per week. Goldwyn Pictures offered her a seven-year contract, but she declined the offer as she was critical of the costumes they had for their contract actors.
Shipman almost drowned during the production of A Gentlemen's Agreement (1918) for a scene depicting an overturned canoe. In 1918, Shipman and her mother Rose Barahm both fell ill with influenza. Shipman managed to fully recover while her mother died.
Back to God's Country to The Grub Stake
thumb|right|alt=Photograph of Nell Shipman playing two characters at the same time|Nell Shipman played a dual role in The Girl from God's Country.
Leaving Vitagraph on 1 November 1918, Shipman formed the Shipman-Curwood Producing Company with Ernest as the business-manager and sales agent. She created a contract with James Oliver Curwood in order to adapt and star in adaptations of his work. Other actresses, such as Gene Gauntier, Clara Kimball Young, Florence Turner, and Anita Stewart, had formed their own production companies after working for other studios.
Curwood's short story Wapi the Walrus was adapted into Back to God's Country. Shipman stated that the original story "was trash as a movie; a mere outline" and her adaptation increased the role of the female protagonist, which was played by Shipman. Back To God's Country was a major Canadian and international silent film hit. Despite the film's success, Curwood did not like the fact that Shipman changed the plot of his short story and the protagonist from Wapi the Great Dane to Delores. Back to God's Country was the only film ever made under the Shipman-Curwood contract. Regardless, the filming took Shipman all over North America. Many of the scenes in the wilderness were filmed in Alberta, near Lesser Slave Lake, other filming locations consist of the San Francisco Bay area, the Kern River domain, and what was not filmed in those locations was filmed using the Robert Brunton Studios in Hollywood. Nell Shipman's role in the making of this film was vital.
Shipman had an extramarital affair with Bert Van Tuyle during the production of Back to God's Country. On 10 May 1920, she divorced Ernest and moved to Highland Park, Los Angeles, with her son and Van Tuyle, who constructed a building next door. Shipman did two films for automobile companies, Trail of the Arrow and Something New, while awaiting her earnings from Back to God's Country. The animals used for Back to God's Country were purchased by Shipman as part of the severance agreement for her partnership with Ernest and Curwood.
thumb|right|alt=A scene from The Grub-Stake in which Nell Shipman is in a lake.|Nell Shipman in The Grub-Stake
Nell Shipman Productions was formed in October 1920. Shipman and Van Tuyle raised $250,000 for The Girl from God's Country in Spokane, Washington, through the company Nell Shipman Productions. The film was unsuccessful and Shipman moved her company to Priest Lake, Idaho, where she produced The Grub-Stake. She transported her zoo of animals on barges up to Priest Lake for her films at Lion Head Lodge. The Grub-Stake cost around $180,000 to produce. The film, in which Shipman starred as a character named Faith Diggs, tells the story of a woman who is lured into a life of prostitution with lies of a better life, which her character eventually escapes from. Subsequently, Diggs ends up in the den of a bear, where she finds there the "love and sympathy denied her by human hearts."
The relationship between Shipman and Van Tuyle ended in 1924. Van Tuyle threatened to kill Shipman around Christmas 1924, and Shipman tried to kill herself by drowning, but was stopped by her son Barry. In 1925, Shipman's company went bankrupt after it produced ten films.