Filmmaker Thomas H. Ince was one of the true pioneers of the early cinema. As a scriptwriter, actor, producer, and director, he was involved in as many as 800 silent pictures and became known as the “Father of the Western” for his work on many early Wild West pictures.
He was the first movie mogul to find a film studio and was one of the co-founders of Paramount Pictures. He even helped establish the role of the movie studio in financing and producing an unending “assembly line” of movies—the same style of production that survives to this day.
But all of Ince’s achievements have long been overshadowed by one thing: his mysterious death in 1924.
By the early 1920s, Ince’s luck was running out and he was rumored to be on the verge of bankruptcy. Attempting to strike a lucrative deal with newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, he accepted an invitation to celebrate his 44th birthday with a two-day cruise aboard Hearst’s yacht, along with a host of Hollywood A-listers.
What happened on board is largely a mystery—but what is known is that, on the second day of the trip, Ince was rushed back to shore for emergency medical treatment and died sometime later.
The official cause of death was recorded as a heart failure, perhaps exacerbated by an aggravated stomach ulcer that Ince had been suffering from for several months. But the peculiar circumstances surrounding Ince’s death quickly began to raise eyebrows and rumors of foul play soon began to circulate.
It later emerged that movie star Charlie Chaplin and Hearst’s mistress, Marion Davies, were also on board the yacht. Hollywood legend would have you believe Chaplin and Davies were embroiled in a passionate romance at the time, conducted right under Hearst’s nose, and that the entire affair was discovered on the first night of Ince’s birthday cruise. In a drunken rage, Hearst allegedly decided to confront Chaplin about the affair in his cabin—but in a tragic case of mistaken identity, stumbled into Ince’s room instead and shot him. As one of America’s wealthiest and most powerful men, Hearst supposedly then used every trick and every contact in his book to cover up the murder and have it dismissed as nothing more than a heart attack.
How true is that sordid tale? It’s unlikely we will ever know…