ABSTRACT
Few of the “yarns”, “tidbits”, and “outfits”, as Shipman used to call her scripts from the early 1910s, can still be traced today. The Shipman filmography established by Turner shows which ones have been filmed and released and by which company. 1 Thus, from 1912 through 1917, she sold scripts to various companies, including Selig, Australasian Films, the American Film Company, the Palo Alto Film Corporation, 2 and, most notably, Universal. To be sure, Shipman continued writing scenarios after 1917, but, after this date, she was usually involved in the films’ production, so I shall discuss them in that context. The length of her scenarios of the 1910s varied from one reel to multiple reels and to series in several installments; the genres included historical drama, such as one HUNDRED YEARS OF MORMONISM OR MY FIGHTING GENTLEMAN, sensational melodrama and what Shipman called “outdoor yarns” such as THE PINE’S REVENGE, a drama of the Northwoods, or THE MELODY OF LOVE, a Western drama with a gold-rush motif. 3 Neither of these scripts has been preserved in the format of a scenario, and none of these films is known to survive today. However, the Shipman Archive holds three items relevant to the topic: a printed synopsis of a 1912 series called THE FEMALE RAFFLES SERIES OF PHOTOPLAYS; a 1916 scenario with the title “The Last Empire,” which to my knowledge was neither sold nor filmed; and Shipman’s novelization of the 1915 Universal series UNDER THE CRESCENT, which was based on her original scenarios. These documents will be discussed after a more general assessment of the conditions and status of script writing in the early 1910s.
