Thomas H. Ince

According to Brian Teves' biography, "Thomas Ince: Hollywood's Independent Pioneer" (2012, University Press of Kentucky), Ince died of a heart attack and had been suffering from ulcers. For years his health had been deteriorating, although many were not aware of the gravity of his condition. Teves refutes many rumors, including Ince's so-called mysterious cremation: Both Ince and his wife Elinor were Theosophists who preferred cremation and had arranged for it long before his death. Teves adds that Elinor did not "suddenly depart" the country after her husband's death but in July 1925, about seven months later. Also, Teves documents that Louella Parsons did not gain her position with publisher William Randolph Hearst as part of a "hush money" deal to keep quiet about Hearst's alleged killing of Ince but that she had been the motion picture editor of the Hearst-owned New York American in December 1923, and her contract was signed a year before Ince's death.

Contrary to the portrait of him in Cat's Meow (2001) as a washed-up producer lucky to make a film a year, in the year before his death in 1924 15 of his movies were released and, at the time of his death, he had nine more before the cameras that were completed posthumously.

In a conversation with journalist/screenwriter Adela Rogers St. Johns, Marion Davies disputed the rumor that William Randolph Hearst killed Ince because he allegedly made a pass at her. Davies, who was Hearst's mistress, said that Ince was a very ambitious man who would not jeopardize his relationship with Hearst by flirting with her. Said Davies: "Why would [Ince] take such a million-to-one chance? Ince was devoted to his wife and family. If he cheated he was damn discreet about it. No, no--I could still recognize it when a man gave me the eye and Tom Ince didn't. Moreover, I would not have given it back to him, so why would [Hearst] get mad enough to murder him? It's plain silly." From Adela Rogers St. Johns, The Honeycomb (1969 Doubleday & Company, Inc.), page 192.

In 1924 Ince was one of several Hollywood people aboard the yacht of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst when he suddenly fell ill. Ince was rushed aboard a train bound for Del Mar where his wife, her son, and a physician met him and accompanied him home where he died. The Los Angeles Times supposedly released the headline "Movie producer Shot on Hearst yacht!" but other papers including the New York Times said that Ince died of heart failure. One of the stories that sensationalized Ince's sudden death said that Hearst shot Ince and that the bullet wasn't meant for Ince but for Charles Chaplin, whom Hearst had long suspected of carrying on a secret affair with his mistress, actress Marion Davies. Supposedly, Hearst inadvertently walked into Davies' cabin and caught her and Chaplin in bed together and fired several shots, missing Chaplin but hitting Ince. Another rumor circulated that columnist Louella Parsons was also on board that day and witnessed the shooting, although other sources say Parsons was in New York at the time.

Ince developed a series of comedies pairing Douglas MacLean and Doris May, and their first picture, 23 1/2 Hours' Leave (1919), was successful. When William S. Hart's contract ended, however, he left the company and Zukor forced Ince out of Paramount/Artcraft.

In 1922 Associated Producers merged with First National.

On February 1, 1922, Paramount director William Desmond Taylor was shot to death in his bungalow and one of the suspects, although never a serious one, was Mack Sennett, who stated that he spent the night at the home of Ince.

Co-founder and President (1920-21) of Associated Producers Inc., formed in 1919.

In December 1919 Thomas Ince, Mack Sennett, Marshall Neilan, Maurice Tourneur, Allan Dwan and other directors joined to form Associated Producers, an independent film alliance. 'Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle' had been approached, but he had no desire to join the group.

Built his Culver City studio in 1918. After his death, it was sold to Cecil B. DeMille, who later sold it to RKO, when it became known as RKO Culver. The studio was leased to David O. Selznick in the late 1930s. Gone with the Wind (1939) was filmed there, razing a number of old DeMille sets for the burning of Atlanta sequence. When Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz bought RKO in 1956, the lot became Desilu Culver. In the mid 1980s, Grant Tinker and Gannett Corp. bought the lot. They sold it to Sony in 1991, who in turn sold it to PCCP Studio City Los Angeles, who now operates it under the name The Culver Studios. The studio is now rented by all the major studios for both film and TV work.

In 1916 Ince produced and directed the anti-war film Civilization (1915), which cost $100,000 and returned $800. 000. Always looking for new talent, Ince signed Olive Thomas, the rising young star of the Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic, to star in his films. At the end of World War I, Ince broke with Triangle and joined his nemesis Adolph Zukor to form Paramount/Artcraft and built yet another studio in Culver City which had a southern mansion facade of Mount Vernon (and later was bought by David O. Selznick).

In 1915 he joined D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett to form the Triangle Motion Picture Company built in Culver City on Washington Boulevard (now the site of Sony Pictures). Fortunately, Hart was a profitable star who kept the company afloat.

In 1914 Ince hired William S. Hart as an actor who could also direct his own films.

In 1913 Ince made over 150 films, mostly Westerns and Civil War dramas. He would also employ directors Frank Borzage, Fred Niblo, Jack Conway, and Henry King.

Ince made the epic The Battle of Gettysburg (1913) and thereafter concentrated on longer films as he moved from director to producer. He employed thousands of technicians and made movies on an assembly-line method.

In 1912, NYMPC and other independent studios merged to form Universal Pictures. Ince built a city of motion picture "sets" on a stretch of land in Santa Monica Mountains called "Inceville" where he shot many of the outdoor locales for his films.

At the end of 1912, Ince hired William Desmond Taylor to act in his film Counterfeiters (1914).

In 1911 he joined the New York Motion Picture Corp. [NYMPC] and headed to California to make Westerns. Ince insisted that all scripts be thoroughly planned out before filming began, which would give him the opportunity to film several scenes at the same time with assistant directors. One of those directors was Francis Ford, the brother of John Ford.

Thomas H. Ince was born into a family of stage actors. He appeared on the stage at age six and worked with a number of stock companies, making his Broadway debut at 15. Vaudeville work was inconsistent, so he was a lifeguard, a promoter and part-time actor. His stage career was a failure but by 1910 he joined Biograph, and after one film, Carl Laemmle's Independent Motion Pictures hired Ince as a director. Ince went to Cuba to make films out of the reach of the Motion Pictures Patent Company -- the trust that attempted to crush all independent production companies and corner the market on film production -- but his output was small.

It was while working as a lifeguard in 1902 in Atlantic Highlands, NJ, that he became convinced that money could be made by staging vaudeville in the town's seaside pavilion. He was wrong.