Happy birthday, Thomas H. Ince!

With Turner Classic Movies’ documentary Movies and Moguls: The History of Hollywood off to a running start, it seems only fitting to recognize that one hundred and twenty eight years ago on this date, Thomas Harper Ince was born in Newport, RI.  Ince’s future career as a pioneering movie mogul might have been dictated by the fact that he came from a family of stage actors—his father, John E. had been a comedian (who later became a theatrical agent) and Mother Ince (Emma) was an actress; brothers John and Ralph also displayed a flair for the buskin (and like their middle brother, went on to directing careers).

Ince has become known as “The Father of the Western”; though he made a number of movies that covered a variety of subjects he was drawn to oaters and Civil War dramas—he admired director D.W. Griffith’s work and aspired to be the same kind of groundbreaking filmmaker.  He would later partner up with Griffith and “King of Comedy” Mack Sennett to form the Triangle Motion Picture Company in 1916; the business venture lasted two years before Thomas sold out to Griffith and Sennett—and the studio was later acquired by Goldwyn Pictures in 1921, becoming M-G-M three years later.  After a brief stint with Adolph Zukor at Paramount-Aircraft studios, Ince got the independent itch and started his own autonomous “Thomas H. Ince Studios” in 1919.

Thomas Ince was forty-two years old when he decided to join his friend, publisher William Randolph Hearst, for a weekend jaunt on Hearst’s yacht in November 1924…a journey that was to set sail from San Pedro, CA to San Diego.  He was late getting to the party and ended up having to take a train to San Diego in order to meet up with the likes of Marion Davies, Charlie Chaplin, Louella Parsons and other guests…but after dinner, Ince reportedly complained about an acute bout of indigestion.  Dr. Daniel C. Goodman—Hearst’s film production manager and, as luck would have it, a licensed (but non-practicing) physician—accompanied Ince via water taxi back to San Diego, and then the two men boarded a train headed back to L.A.  His condition continued to worsen, and once back at his Hollywood home he succumbed to what was diagnosed as a heart ailment.

Or did he?  There has been rampant speculation for years that Ince’s death wasn’t due to an oopsy tummy but that he was the victim of a stray bullet that was meant for the Little Tramp (Chaplin), who was apparently doodling around with Ms. Davies, aka Hearst’s “Rosebud.”  No one really knows for certain, though the chain of events was nicely dramatized in the 2001 film The Cat’s Meow, directed by Peter Bogdanovich.  Ince’s death and the circumstances surrounding it have unfortunately tarnished the man’s cinematic legacy—Thrilling Days of Yesteryear feels it’s only right to give the director of such silents as The Coward (1915) and Civilization (1916) a birthday shout-out, as well as these other notable celebrities:

Charles Dow (1851-1902) – American journalist who co-founded the Dow Jones and was the first editor of the Wall Street Journal

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) – Musician/composer who liked a good march

James Naismith (1861-1939) – Sports coach who invented basketball and is also often credited with introducing the first football helmet

Ole Olsen (1892-1963) – Partner of Chic Johnson

Frank Readick (1896-1965) – OTR great who replaced actor James La Curto in 1931 as The Shadow (and who actually did the sinister laugh on the intros and outros during the Orson Welles years) and later became a member of Welles’ Mercury Players, immortally emoting as the doomed CBS News reporter Carl Phillips in the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast

Rowland Brown (1897-1963) – Motion picture screenwriter who also directed my personal pick for best Pre Code film in a recent LAMB poll, Blood Money, in 1933

Francis Lederer (1899-2000) – Stage, film and television actor whose vehicles include Pandora’s Box, Midnight and Confessions of a Nazi Spy; also founded the American National Academy of Performing Arts

June Marlowe (1903-1984) – Silent and sound film actress best remembered as schoolteacher Miss Crabtree in the early Our Gang talkie two-reelers

Selena Royle (1904-1983) – Unsung film and television character actress whose vehicles include A Date with Judy, Joan of Arc, The Heiress and He Ran All the Way

Jonathan Harris (1914-2002) – Stage, film and television character actor immortalized by his role as the delightfully fruity “villain” Dr. Zachary Smith on TV’s Lost in Space

Ray Conniff (1916-2002) – Grammy Award-winning composer/bandleader of “easy listening” music who performed the theme song to Archie Bunker’s Place

Ronnie Brody (1918-1991) – Diminutive British character actor and second banana best remembered as a regular on Dave Allen at Large

James Jones (1921-1977) – Author who wrote such novels as From Here to Eternity, Some Came Running and The Thin Red Line

Sam O’Steen (1923-2000) – Motion picture film editor who worked on many of the films directed by fellow birthday boy Mike Nichols: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, Silkwood, etc.

Mike Nichols (1931-     ) – One time comedic partner of Elaine May who graduated to stage and film directing; his vehicles include…well, see above listing for Sam O’Steen

Stonewall Jackson (1932-     ) – Country music singer-songwriting great…and a direct descendant of the Confederate Army general of the same name

Gordon Wharmby (1933-2002) – British character actor best remembered as the henpecked Wesley Pegden on the landmark Britcom Last of the Summer Wine

Michael Schwerner (1939-1964) – Civil rights activist who, along with James Cheney and Andrew Goodman, was killed by the Ku Klux Klan near the town of Philadelphia, MI in 1964

Doug Sahm (1941-1999) – Singer-songwriter and frontman for the Sir Douglas Quintet

Guy Clark (1941-     ) – Country music singer-songwriter who wrote one of the best damn country songs ever in Desperadoes Waiting for a Train…but you’re going to hear him extol the virtues of homegrown tomatoes