The Silent Screen and My Talking Heart by Nell Shipman (review)

66 Western American Literature trite and sometimes laughable, to wit, Gary Snyder’s split-level diction: Corso has “really shit on a lot of scenes, egregious shit, as it were.” And everywhere one hears the old talk: pad, man, like, crash, daddy, vibes, and like, karma, you know. The quality of the editing is simply bad. The introduction is mainly irrelevant, non-analytical, and embarrassingly personal and solicitous. There is no concluding chapter, no bibliography. No principle of selection is offered, and individual chapters are devoid of necessary editorial commentary or foot­ notes. Research is inadequate (e.g., the “unidentified girl” in the photo on page 55 is Katrina Daniels, a.k.a. Stark Naked), layout is erratic (e.g., a photo that appears on page 188 is not referred to until page 193), and no material in the book justifies the inflated aesthetic and political claims made for it off­ handedly in the introduction. Despite these weaknesses, the book is interesting as a kind of nostalgically annotated photo album. M. GILBERT PORTER University of Missouri—Columbia The Silent Screen and My Talking Heart. By Nell Shipman. (Boise: Boise State University, 1987. 256 pages, $13.95.) This is the story of Canadian-born Nell Shipman, spirited star and mav­ erick producer of the early film industry. Best known for her role in “The Girl from God’s Country” (about a gutsy backwoods heroine of considerable will and resourcefulness), Shipman, who comes through her autobiography as possessing a great deal of spunk and spice, bears a striking resemblance to her favorite character. As a producer, Nell insisted on authenticity in the outdoor and wildlife scenes which were the heart of her films. In their sympathetic portrayal of nature, these films were unusual for their time. Sharing the limelight in her bookwith her beloved animalactors such as the bear,Brownie, and the Siberian wolf, Dumka, Shipman devotes much of her narrative to her remarkable relationship with and empathy for these wild creatures, capturing their per­ sonalities and eccentricities with the keen observation and appreciative delight of a true animal lover. In an age when animal actors were considered expendble , she was a pioneer in her emphasis on their humane treatment. Shipman’sautobiography traces a lively career from the stage-struck days of her youth when she toured with a traveling theater company, journeying far up into the wilds of Alaska doing bit parts and vaudeville acts, to her suc­ cess as an actress and independent producer. Its finale is staged in the rugged wilderness around nothern Idaho’sPriest Lake where shemoved with her com­ pany “zoo” of seventy assorted animals in 1922. This wild terrain, from which she barely escaped alive, formed the backdrop for the last of her pioneering work in films which starred “God’s Country” and its wild inhabitants. The Reviews 67 story of Shipman’s last winter on location and the fate of her company of loyal two-legged and four-legged creatures provides a dramatic and moving climax to her memoirs. SHARON KAHIN Dubois, Wyoming The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, August 30,1803- August 24, 1804, Vol. II. Ed. Gary E. Moulton. (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Ne­ braska Press, 1986. 612 pages, $40.00.) The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, August 25, 1804-April 6, 1805, Vol. III. Ed. Gary E. Moulton. (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Ne­ braska Press, 1987. 544 pages, $40.00.) Students of the literature of the Lewis and Clark Expedition from St. Louis to the Pacific and back at President Jefferson’sbidding in 1804-06, and “buffs” of this greatest of American explorations, have every reason to rejoice at the most recent of the four major editions of the journals of the explorers and other materials produced by them. Two volumes of thè journals are now available, as well as an Atlas of Expedition maps published in 1983 and reviewed in Western American Literature (May, 1985). Eleven volumes are planned, including the Atlas, the journals of Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Sergeants Charles Floyd, John Ordway, and Patrick Gass, and Private Joseph Whitehouse, and a volume of the Expe­ dition’s natural history materials. The impressive accumulation...