Quote:
"[The Girl from God's Country] opened at Mr. Clune's Broadway house and everyone liked it because there was something it it for everyone to like! A real sockeroo, twelve reels of whizz and bang. Too long for a top half of dual bookings. [Bert] Van Tuyle and I caught it on general release in Santa Ana cut to nine reels. Murdered, slaughtered, senseless—well, perhaps it never boasted much sense but it did hang together. Not at 9000 feet! Toes that trod the continuity trail, fingers pointing the way, eyes expressing explanatory emotions in close-ups which registered character reactions, in fact entire sequences lopped off the torso and left bleeding on a sneaky cutting room floor. [...] I, then and there, hot under the wolverine collar of my genuine leather coat, banging my brief case in my rage, hied me to a Western Union office and broadcast a paid full-page ad to every trade paper in the Industry. It was addressed to Mr. 'Exhibitor' and it begged him [...] to not book my maltreated, malformed, abortion of a picture. [...] Some of the more important trade papers did not accept the copy. Would-be, Sandlot producers did not buck theatre owners, big-time Studios, Louis B. Mayer or Bill Clune. They shut up and slunk away to lick their celluloid wounds. Was I black-balled in the business? I really don't know for certain. I do know I was spanked, that henceforth I heard strange, sharp sounds as if some doors down a long corridor were slammed shut."
-- Nell Shipman

Source:
Shipman, Nell. The Silent Screen & My Talking Heart: An Autobiography. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University, 1987. (pp. 104-105)