Bert Van Tuyle

A former race-car driver, Bert Van Tuyle's screen career was almost completely devoted to (and dependent upon) producer/director/writer/star Nell Shipman, one of the silent era's great renaissance women. After directing low-budget one-reelers for his own Vanco company, Van Tuyle functioned as production manager on Shipman's (and author James Oliver Curwood's) Back to God's Country (1919). He was promoted to director/leading man (and offscreen lover) on Shipman's next project, Something New (1920), a five-reel commercial for the Essex Maxwell automobile that Shipman and Van Tuyle managed to turn into a statement about the changing of the West in general and women's position in society in particular. Van Tuyle later accompanied the actress to Idaho, where they made such outdoor melodramas as The Grub Stake (1923) and The Golden Yukon (1927). As with most of the "men behind" the silent era's female directors (Herbert Blaché/Alice Guy-Blaché, Phillips Smalley/Lois Weber, Joseph De Grasse/Ida May Park), Van Tuyle's actual input on the films of Nell Shipman remains a matter of conjecture.

~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide