The movie was unmade, the Society unjoined—but his inclination was Fortean.
Barry Shipman was born 24 February 1912 in Pasadena to Ernest and Nell Shipman, he a theatrical producer and she an actress. Barry grew up on Hollywood studio lots, and accompanied his mother—after her divorce—on location in Big Bear, and at a “movie camp” on the Washington-Idaho border. Later in the 1920s, they moved frequently, through Connecticut, Florida, Spain, and back to California in 1928. Shipman himself went into the entertainment business and, in 1934, married an actress, Beulah McDonald, who went by the stage name Gwynne Shipman. They would have three children, a daughter an twin sons.
Barry Shipman was born 24 February 1912 in Pasadena to Ernest and Nell Shipman, he a theatrical producer and she an actress. Barry grew up on Hollywood studio lots, and accompanied his mother—after her divorce—on location in Big Bear, and at a “movie camp” on the Washington-Idaho border. Later in the 1920s, they moved frequently, through Connecticut, Florida, Spain, and back to California in 1928. Shipman himself went into the entertainment business and, in 1934, married an actress, Beulah McDonald, who went by the stage name Gwynne Shipman. They would have three children, a daughter an twin sons.
Two years after his marriage, Shipman started screenwriting. He worked on Republic serials, Dick Tracy, The Lone Ranger, Zorro, and Flash Gordon. Shipman served with the marines during the war, stationed in Quantico, Virginia, with the photographic section. Back in California, he returned to Hollywood and working on serials, now for Columbia. As the demand for movie serials declined, he moved to television, working on, inter alia, Death Valley Days, the Adventures of Kit Carson, Lassie, and State Trooper. Freelance work, though, was insecure, and he had three children, and so he went to work with the military, first as a consultant, and later full time, making training movies in southern California. He found that his old Hollywood experiences sometimes dreaded the wheels, getting otherwise uncooperative engineers to talk to him once they learned he had written for Flash Gordon, which many of them had grown up loving.
Shipman retired in 1979; around this time, he started collaborating on historical investigations of his mother’s life. He also received some acclaim from science fiction fans, who by now had moved into the mainstream, for his early work. (George Lucas’s “Star Wars” was consciously built on the old science fiction serials of the 1940s.)
Barry Shipman died 12 August 1994, in San Bernardino, California. He was 82.
******************
Shipman’s interest in Fort was—from the evidence I have seen—short-lived, but his understanding of Fort was part and parcel with his more general outlook on what he wanted to do in the entertainment world. It seems that Shipman first came across Fort in 1941, with the publication of the omnibus edition of Fort’s works. I do not know what caused him to pick up the books, but it seems likely that, as someone writing science fiction serials, he would have seen it advertised and maybe even suggested as a source of plots. He was instantly intrigued.
Shipman eventually contacted Thayer, and was sent a membership form; I do not know that he ever filled it out, ever paid dues, was ever a member of the Fortean Society. Certainly his name never appeared in “Doubt.” But his Fortean interest was not in joining with others, not in sowing dissent and throwing brickbats at the powers-that-be. He wanted to make a movie.
On 29 June 1941—not quite three months after the omnibus Fort was officially published—Shipman wrote to Thayer, begging him not to let Hollywood destroy Fort: even Disney, he said, would make too conventional a film. But that was not to say there shouldn’t be a cinematic version (and, given Fort’s love for movie-making, one wonders what he would have thought of such a proposition). Shipman said—in the florid prose that ran throughout his letter—“So the time has come, this walrus believes, to make pictures of many things—of rains of frogs, aye, and periwinkles. And why a space craft in 1841 had wings.” He asked to call on him in New York.
Thayer wrote back in 19 July 1941, sending the application and bemused vibes. He remarked that he’d been in Hollywood five years and saw no way that Fort could be made into a commercially viable fit. “Tell me more?” There was no further correspondence between the two. I do not know what happened, if there was ever a meeting between the two men, but it is likely a combination of events squashed Shipman’s plans: Thayer was cool about the idea; World War II interrupted Shipman’s career; and, if Shipman read any issues of “Doubt,” he was likely put off—Thayer was gung-ho against the war, while Shipman was patriotic and joined the service.
But though the film was never made, and though there was a bad fit between Shipman and the Society—these things do not exhaust his Forteanism. It is clear he was not out to make a movie of Fort’s books (solely) for commercial purposes. He wanted to help to spread Fort’s ideas—Shipman told Thayer that motion pictures were a “super-calibrated cannon which the nine excellent aims of the Fortean Society can put to use.” More importantly, he saw in Fort an echo of his own entertainment philosophy, and wanted to express it in a creative way.
A friend of Shipman’s, Mike Newton, said after his death, “As a boy, Barry Shipman had dreamed up his own monsters that lurked under the bed and then imagined himself as the superhero who killed them. It was these boyhood fantasies that he transferred to paper for a generation of Saturday afternoon fans. For those of us in the audience, not yet old enough to take on the responsibilities of adult life, Barry Shipman allowed us to live vicariously through the thrilling deeds of the hero on the screen. When we learned the following week that the hero didn't really die in that raging ride or explosion, we didn't feel cheated. After all, he was the hero and there were more chapters to come. That was Barry Shipman's talent—making the implausible seem plausible. ‘I wrote for the 12-year-old mind,’ he once said. ‘For the twelve-year-old in all of us.’
Shipman saw in Fort something similar; making the implausible plausible, of course—but also an arrow to the heart of twelve year olds. He told Thayer, “From that scope-hungry generation avidly devouring the antics of Superman, I hear a plaintive lament. ‘We will grow older,’ it seems to say, ‘and we will have to renounce these things most dear to us now because we will know that they are absurd and cannot happen. And we will fall in line with those of the dull, gray horde who march in so perfect a step to that so carefully calibrated metronome so painstakingly designed for our control. And we in turn will deride the young and foolish for their childish fantasies. And we will wisely pronounce these fantasies simply as mechanisms of escape while around and around inside the four great, gray walls we march in so perfect a unison.’”
Twelve-year-olds were growing up, and losing their sense of wonder. Fort, he was saying, could help them retain it even into adulthood. Maybe they could no longer believe in Superman, but they could know that the world remained a mysterious place, not fully explained even by scientists.
I do not know if Shipman continued to think of Fort in these terms, after the plan for the movie fell through. One expects that he did, though, because the world did go ahead an surprise him: one thinks of those aeronautical engineers in southern California, the very model of gray drones, who nonetheless held on to their sense of whimsy, and remembered so fondly the Flash Gordon dreams he had sent them in the golden moments of their youth.
Shipman retired in 1979; around this time, he started collaborating on historical investigations of his mother’s life. He also received some acclaim from science fiction fans, who by now had moved into the mainstream, for his early work. (George Lucas’s “Star Wars” was consciously built on the old science fiction serials of the 1940s.)
Barry Shipman died 12 August 1994, in San Bernardino, California. He was 82.
******************
Shipman’s interest in Fort was—from the evidence I have seen—short-lived, but his understanding of Fort was part and parcel with his more general outlook on what he wanted to do in the entertainment world. It seems that Shipman first came across Fort in 1941, with the publication of the omnibus edition of Fort’s works. I do not know what caused him to pick up the books, but it seems likely that, as someone writing science fiction serials, he would have seen it advertised and maybe even suggested as a source of plots. He was instantly intrigued.
Shipman eventually contacted Thayer, and was sent a membership form; I do not know that he ever filled it out, ever paid dues, was ever a member of the Fortean Society. Certainly his name never appeared in “Doubt.” But his Fortean interest was not in joining with others, not in sowing dissent and throwing brickbats at the powers-that-be. He wanted to make a movie.
On 29 June 1941—not quite three months after the omnibus Fort was officially published—Shipman wrote to Thayer, begging him not to let Hollywood destroy Fort: even Disney, he said, would make too conventional a film. But that was not to say there shouldn’t be a cinematic version (and, given Fort’s love for movie-making, one wonders what he would have thought of such a proposition). Shipman said—in the florid prose that ran throughout his letter—“So the time has come, this walrus believes, to make pictures of many things—of rains of frogs, aye, and periwinkles. And why a space craft in 1841 had wings.” He asked to call on him in New York.
Thayer wrote back in 19 July 1941, sending the application and bemused vibes. He remarked that he’d been in Hollywood five years and saw no way that Fort could be made into a commercially viable fit. “Tell me more?” There was no further correspondence between the two. I do not know what happened, if there was ever a meeting between the two men, but it is likely a combination of events squashed Shipman’s plans: Thayer was cool about the idea; World War II interrupted Shipman’s career; and, if Shipman read any issues of “Doubt,” he was likely put off—Thayer was gung-ho against the war, while Shipman was patriotic and joined the service.
But though the film was never made, and though there was a bad fit between Shipman and the Society—these things do not exhaust his Forteanism. It is clear he was not out to make a movie of Fort’s books (solely) for commercial purposes. He wanted to help to spread Fort’s ideas—Shipman told Thayer that motion pictures were a “super-calibrated cannon which the nine excellent aims of the Fortean Society can put to use.” More importantly, he saw in Fort an echo of his own entertainment philosophy, and wanted to express it in a creative way.
A friend of Shipman’s, Mike Newton, said after his death, “As a boy, Barry Shipman had dreamed up his own monsters that lurked under the bed and then imagined himself as the superhero who killed them. It was these boyhood fantasies that he transferred to paper for a generation of Saturday afternoon fans. For those of us in the audience, not yet old enough to take on the responsibilities of adult life, Barry Shipman allowed us to live vicariously through the thrilling deeds of the hero on the screen. When we learned the following week that the hero didn't really die in that raging ride or explosion, we didn't feel cheated. After all, he was the hero and there were more chapters to come. That was Barry Shipman's talent—making the implausible seem plausible. ‘I wrote for the 12-year-old mind,’ he once said. ‘For the twelve-year-old in all of us.’
Shipman saw in Fort something similar; making the implausible plausible, of course—but also an arrow to the heart of twelve year olds. He told Thayer, “From that scope-hungry generation avidly devouring the antics of Superman, I hear a plaintive lament. ‘We will grow older,’ it seems to say, ‘and we will have to renounce these things most dear to us now because we will know that they are absurd and cannot happen. And we will fall in line with those of the dull, gray horde who march in so perfect a step to that so carefully calibrated metronome so painstakingly designed for our control. And we in turn will deride the young and foolish for their childish fantasies. And we will wisely pronounce these fantasies simply as mechanisms of escape while around and around inside the four great, gray walls we march in so perfect a unison.’”
Twelve-year-olds were growing up, and losing their sense of wonder. Fort, he was saying, could help them retain it even into adulthood. Maybe they could no longer believe in Superman, but they could know that the world remained a mysterious place, not fully explained even by scientists.
I do not know if Shipman continued to think of Fort in these terms, after the plan for the movie fell through. One expects that he did, though, because the world did go ahead an surprise him: one thinks of those aeronautical engineers in southern California, the very model of gray drones, who nonetheless held on to their sense of whimsy, and remembered so fondly the Flash Gordon dreams he had sent them in the golden moments of their youth.