- Born
- Died
- Birth nameHelen Foster-Barham
- Canadian-born actress, writer, producer and animal trainer Nell Shipman was best known for writing and acting in several James Oliver Curwood stories and for her portrayals of strong, adventurous women, with many of her productions being filmed in Canada. Her son, Barry Shipman, became a prolific screenwriter, mostly of westerns.
- IMDb mini biography by: A. Nonymous
- SpousesCharles Haines Austin Ayers(1925 - 1934) (divorced, 2 children)Ernest Shipman(August 22, 1911 - May 12, 1920) (divorced, 1 child)
- Children
- RelativesNina Shipman(Grandchild)Lani Bremer(Great Grandchild)
- She was the first actress in legitimate-film history to ever do a full frontal nude scene on film. It was in Back to God's Country (1919), which coincidentally (or perhaps because of the scene) became the most financially successful silent film ever made in Canada. The tagline in one of the posters for the movie was, "Is the Nude Rude?".
- In the 1920s, she built a movie camp called Lionhead Lodge at Priest lake, Idaho, and kept a menagerie of animals there.
- Mother of Barry Shipman.
- Co-founder (w/Bert Van Tuyle) of Nell Shipman Productions Inc., formed in 1920.
- Two titles frequently appear in Shipman filmographies: "The Tiger of the Sea, The (1918)" and "The Eighth Great Grand-Parent." "Tiger" was advertised in 1918 by her husband Ernest Shipman as a seven-reel feature based on a Nell Shipman script and available to state rights distributors, but there is no evidence that this film was ever made. "The Eighth" is the title of the original story on which the Vitagraph production The Wild Strain (1918) was based. Furthermore, Lauritzen and Lundquist mention another Shipman-scripted seven-reel state rights offering for 1919, "The Coast Guard Patrol", but again she was never involved with this title.
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