10 Golden Age Scandals Hollywood Wants You To Forget
3. Thomas H. Ince’s Suspicious Death
His name might not ring too many bells nowadays but back in the
day, director Thomas H. Ince was one of Hollywood’s biggest trailblazers. Dubbed
the ‘Father of the Western’, Ince made over 800 films in his time and alongside
founding one of the first major Hollywood studios, he also a pioneer of modern,
organised movie production as we know it today. Sadly, his contributions to the
film industry are often eclipsed by the suspicious circumstances surrounding
his death.
Whilst negotiating a production deal with media mogul William Randolph Hearst, Ince was invited aboard Hearst’s luxury yacht for a celebratory dinner in honour of the director’s 44th birthday. All the cool kids du jour were there – Hearst’s mistress and silent film star Marion Davies, Charlie Chaplin, starlet Margaret Livingston and gossip columnist Louella Parsons, among others – and the party was in full swing when Ince took ill and had to be taken ashore for treatment, dying just a few days later.
The official cause of Ince’s death was deemed to be heart failure, but rumours quickly swirled that something shadier was afoot. Legend has it that Davies and Chaplin were having an affair and Ince was shot by Hearst after the tycoon mistook him for Chaplin. Hearst, being a super rich and influential media tycoon, supposedly successfully covered up Ince’s murder.
Conflicting reports from those aboard the yacht muddled the mire even further. Add to that rumours that Ince’s widow had a trust fund set up for her by Hearst in the wake of her husband’s death and Louella Parsons negotiated a lifetime contract with Hearst’s newspapers after that fateful yacht party, and it seems the circumstances surrounding Ince’s death could indeed be fishy.