BOISE — In the flickering light of her silent melodramas, Nell Shipman races by dogsled across frozen Priest Lake. She shoots rapids and scales the slopes of nearby Lookout Mountain in deep snow.
Shipman was one of the first woman filmmakers and an "indie" before the Hollywood studio system stifled such independent American movies until the closing years of the 20th century.
Boise State University English professor Tom Trusky and the American Film Institute have tracked down the film that was missing out of five Shipman shot in Idaho in the mid-1920s. Trusky has also released a new book called "Letters from God's Country," with 1917-1970 correspondence to and from Shipman, who has become the toast of Canadian film buffs.
"Her life was her own cliffhanger," he said. "She was an independent. When you say 'indie' now, Robert Redford and the Sundance Film Festival come to mind."
Trusky has spent years doing detective work on the Internet and through tips to track down Shipman's silent films for the Idaho Film Collection at Boise State. He and American Film Institute curator Kim Tomadjoglou have just acquired "Wolf's Brush" from an English family.
"It's the last, lost, made-in-Idaho Nell Shipman film," said Trusky, who has not seen the movie yet. "Who knows what we'll see in 'Wolf's Brush'? It's a mystery."
Such films are ticking time bombs. During the silent era, cellulose nitrate film was used for the majority of films. It is a highly flammable and unstable compound. The decomposition of nitrate film cannot be halted. "Wolf's Brush" will be converted to new, permanent film.
Two new copies will be made for the Idaho Film Collection. The Library of Congress keeps the original for its archives and can make other copies.
Shipman was born in Victoria, B.C., in 1892. She moved to Seattle at age 12 but left for a vaudeville career a year later. She produced a number of silent films and by 1919, had her biggest hit, "Back to God's Country."
During the 1920s, Shipman shot her Priest Lake films, including "The Grub-Stake," "Trail of the North Wind," "The Light on the Lookout," "White Water" and "Wolf's Brush." The last title is an Indian expression for the wisps of cirrus clouds colored like fire by the sunrise or sunset, Trusky said.
All of Shipman's films portray a strong woman who "protected her man, defeated the villain and generally saved the day — all the while looking good," Toronto University film professor Kay Armitage wrote in Maclean's, the Canadian weekly magazine.
In "The Grub-Stake," Shipman plays Faith Diggs, who is caring for her invalid father. She meets Alaskan gambler Mark Leroy, who entices her to the Klondike. But Faith finds out Leroy is married to a dance hall girl. Faith and her father flee into the wilderness, where she encounters friendly wild animals. She ultimately finds romance and Mark Leroy, fittingly, dies in a fall.
"Women are the heroes of the story," Trusky said. "Her films are autobiographical. She's the proto-suffragette or feminist."
Shipman also believed in shooting on location.
To film "Back to God's Country," Shipman took her crew to the Lesser Slave Lake in northern Alberta. Her leading man contracted pneumonia and later died. Company manager Bert Van Tuyle froze his right foot, which was amputated.
"She really did believe in location shooting," Trusky said. "She didn't believe in pouring soap flakes over the actors so it looks like the brutal winter conditions."
In the same film, her character bathes in a mountain pool. Shipman donned a flesh-colored wool bathing suit. But it got wet and wrinkled, so Shipman peeled it off, but kept the camera running. She later boasted she had appeared nude on film before actress Hedy Lamarr bared it all in "Ecstasy" in 1933.
Trusky said it took dogsleds to carry all the heavy cameras to Priest Lake in the winter and a mule train in the summer.
"She definitely was a woman film pioneer," Tomadjoglou said. "She made very physical movies in terms of the action. Melodramas were usually staged indoors, not typically shot outdoors."
Animals played important roles in Shipman's melodramas.
"There were deer, dogs, skunks, eagles, bears," Trusky said. "The dog carries the message. The bear scares off the bad guys."
Shipman treated all the animals as pets. At one point, they made up the largest privately owned collection of wild animals in the United States.
Shipman had four love affairs over the years, some overlapping. Like other artists of her time, she moved to the 1920 hot spots of Spain, Cuba, Florida, Greenwich Village and Taos, N.M.
Her golden years in cinematography started to wane as the industry evolved.
"She does it all: write, act, edit, direct and produce," Trusky said. "But the whole model of Hollywood was changing to a studio system with everything centralized. Independents were an endangered species."
Shipman's career started to go downhill. She sold "The Grub-Stake" to a distributor, who quickly went bankrupt. She received no money and was unable to recover the film. She gave her animals to the San Diego Zoo.
Shipman eventually moved to a California "dude ranch for dogs," where she cared for canine actors like Rin Tin Tin while their owners were on vacation. She died broke and alone in 1970.
But recent years have been good to Shipman.
While she filmed five movies in Idaho, all the melodramas supposedly took place in Canada, so that country calls her one of its own. The Canada postal system recently released a series of stamps honoring stars of the silver screen, including a Nell Shipman stamp.
The Toronto Film Festival also showcased her films in September. "Wolf's Brush" will be presented at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy next fall.
Trusky's extensive Idaho Film Collection offers glimpses into the early days of Idaho, including unspoiled scenery and once-vibrant industries such as logging. It also features five movies by a very unique woman.
"It's sort of like reading a dime novel," Trusky said. "Will she survive? Will she make her films? It's all there."