SOURCE: "Thomas H. Ince Was the Pioneer Producer Who Systematized the Making of a Movie," in Films in Review, Vol. XI, No. 8, October, 1960, pp. 464-84.

Thomas H. Ince, one of the more important of the pioneer filmmakers and one of the most interesting of the early producers, was only 43 when he died, suddenly, in 1924.

Today film historians are divided in their estimates of him. Some dismiss him as merely a commercial producer, who contributed nothing of lasting significance. Some praise his contributions to scenario construction and film editing, which, they say, did much to elevate the motion picture in its formative years. In France Ince has even been called "the equal, if not the master" of D. W. Griffith.

He was neither, but he nonetheless deserves a prominent place in film history. It was he who systematized the production methods, inaugurated by J. Stuart Blackton, which are the standard operating procedures of the motion picture industry today. In doing this Ince made his greatest contribution to motion picture technique: he proved that filmmaking is better, as well as more economical, when a scenario is complete to the last detail before shooting begins.

Ince was a demanding man, but he could do, and often did, the things he demanded of others, including altering a script, directing a scene, and editing a final negative. Indeed, in his heyday he was often called "the doctor of sick film." For he was also a showman, and his flair for ballyhooing a picture, and himself, accounted for much of his commercial success, and for much of the reclame which still attaches to the pictures that bear the legend: "Thomas H. Ince Presents."

He was born on November 16, 1882, in Newport, R.I., but not in one of the millionaire mansions of that famous resort. He was christened Thomas Harper Ince by parents who earned a precarious living on the stage. His father enjoyed something of a reputation for his ability to "impersonate Chinese," and later became a theatrical agent in New York, where he was known as "Pop" Ince. Sidney Olcott, one of the important early motion picture directors (see Films in Review, April '54) was one of the young actors placed by "Pop" Ince.

There were two other Ince boys—John, three years older than Tom, and Ralph, five years younger. [Both acted in, and directed, many motion pictures. John entered the movies in '13, directed for most of the early companies, notably Pathe, Lubin and Metro, returned to acting in the '30s, and was often used by Warners, Columbia, Mascot and Fox. I believe he is still alive. Ralph impersonated Lincoln in Vitagraph's Battle Hymn of the Republic ('12), and in '15 directed one of that company's finest films, The Juggernaut, starring Earl Williams and Anita Stewart. He was well thought of as both actor and director at the time of his death in '37.] All three went on the stage early—Tom at the age of six. At 15 he appeared with Leo Ditrichstein, and shortly thereafter had a part in the Broadway production of Shore Acres. He barnstormed through Canada with the Beryl Hope Stock Company, and worked in vaudeville as a song-&-dance man.

In the summer of 1902, while working as a lifeguard at Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, which was more fashionable then than now, he became convinced money could be made by staging vaudeville acts in the Highlands' seaside pavilion on summer nights. He saved enough the following winter from his salary as the halfwit in The Ninety and Nine to lease the pavilion. But the venture was not lucrative.

He returned to Broadway, in both drama and musical comedy, and while appearing in Hearts Courageous, a drama of the American Revolutionary War starring Orrin Johnson, he became friends with William S. Hart, who had the Patrick Henry role. After Hearts Courageous closed he and Hart and Frank Stammers, an actor-musician, roomed together in the old Hotel Harrington on Broadway at 44th street. They were on short rations and often out of work and for recreation in the winter of 1903-04 Stammers would play his cello and Hart would tell stories of the Old West, especially of the Sioux Indians, whom he had known as a boy in the Dakota Territories. The Ince-Hart friendship was to last for many years.

In 1905 Ince promoted a stock company of his own, but it was not successful. Then, after appearing with William Thompson in The Bishop, he got a featured part in a musical comedy success, For Love's Sweet Sake, which lasted two years. During the run of this show, on October 19, 1907, he married a member of its cast, Eleanor Kershaw.

The next few years were precarious and in the fall of 1910 Ince was standing on Times Square "trying to figure out how to keep the proverbial wolf from the door of my Harlem flat," when a big, flashy automobile pulled up to the curb. He was surprised to see descend from it an actor named Joseph Smiley, with whom he had worked in vaudeville. Smiley greeted Ince warmly, invited him to lunch, and revealed that his prosperity was the result of working "in the movies—for the IMP Company." Although Ince had always thought only actors who couldn't make the grade on the stage went into the movies, he asked if there was any chance for him at IMP. Smiley replied: "Why, yes, there should be. You're an actor, aren't you? There may be something there this afternoon."

The IMP studio was then on 56th Street and resembled, according to Ince's later recollection, "the dreadful tank-town theatres I had played in on tour." However, a 1-reeler was being directed that afternoon by Harry Salter, whom Ince had known on the stage. Salter gave him a small part and paid him $5. A few days later IMP offered him a job as a stock actor.

After several weeks at IMP Ince accepted the part of the heavy in Biograph's His New Lid, starring Lucille Lee Stewart, the wife of his brother Ralph. It was a 1-reeler and was directed by Frank Powell, formerly an actor in Griffith's stock company at Biograph. His New Lid was released on November 24, 1910.

By this time Ince had become interested in directing movies, and believing there was no chance of doing so at Biograph, he returned to act for IMP when Tom Cochrane, the studio manager there, promised to make him a director at the first opportunity.

This happened sooner than either expected. One of IMP's regular directors suddenly quit and Cochrane handed Ince an amateurish script based on an old poem called "Little Nell's Tobacco." Ince rewrote the script and shot the 1-reeler in record time. Cochrane was impressed, but to make Ince a permanent director he needed the OK of Carl Laemmle, the head of IMP. Laemmle agreed to look at the picture and did so in a nearby nickelodeon, where it was playing. Ince accompanied him and called each favorable manifestation by the audience to Laemmle's attention. Result: Ince was hired as a permanent director, to the chagrin of jealous IMP actors and technicians.

Laemmle, who had originally operated movie theatres and a film exchange in Chicago, was at that time embattled with the Motion Pictures Patents Co., which, he charged, was a "trust". In 1910 he had lured Mary Pickford from Biograph to his Independent Motion Picture Co. (IMP) and had been sued by the MPP Co., of which Biograph was a part, for patent infringement. In ' 11 he had sent Ben Turpin, later famous as the cross-eyed comedian in Mack Sennett comedies, to scout out a location in California free from the reach of the "trust". Turpin reported there was no such place. So Laemmle decided to make movies in Cuba.

He sent a company of 72 there under the supervision of his production chief, C. A. ("Doc") Willat, who, curiously, was the son-in-law of W. R. Rock, of Vitagraph, one of the companies licensed to use the Edison patents controlled by the MPP Co. Among the 72 were Mary Pickford, Owen Moore, King Baggott, Jack Pickford, Mrs. Charlotte Pickford, Lotte Pickford, Hayward Mack, Charles Westen (property master), Tony Gaudio (cameraman), Joseph Smiley, and Ince, who was put in charge of the films starring Mary Pickford. Smiley headed the unit that made the films starring King Baggott.

The Cuban hegira was a series of misadventures. Trouble began when Mrs. Pickford discovered that Mary had secretly married Owen Moore. The MPP Co. did what it could to gum things up. Willat couldn't get enough raw film. The climate didn't agree with some of the key technicians. An irreconcilable personality clash developed between Ince and Owen Moore. In her autobiography Mary Pickford says the climax was reached when an assistant of Ince's, a man named North, insulted her and Moore beat him up and North called the police. To prevent Moore's arrest Mrs. Pickford got him and Mary out of Cuba.

Despite the misadventures, movies were produced and Ince gained valuable experience. So much so that he soon tired of making for Laemmle such 1-reel chromos as Their First Misunderstanding, Artful Kate, Her Darkest Hour, The Empty Shell, Message in the Bottle, The Dream and Sweet Memories. When he heard that Adam Kessel, Jr., and Charles O. Bauman, the heads of the New York Motion Picture Co., were looking for a director to take charge of their West Coast studio, Ince went to see them.

Kessel and Bauman were an interesting pair. They were former bookmakers who, in 1909, promoted themselves into the motion picture business after New York's Governor Charles Evans Hughes banned horse racing. At first they operated a film exchange in New York City, and they got into the production of films when "the trust" cut off their supply of pictures. At the time Ince visited them they had a production unit called Bison Life Motion Pictures which made Westerns at Edendale, a suburb of Los Angeles, and a producing company in New York called Reliance, and had agreed to finance Mack Sennett's Keystone comedy unit. Ince later described his meeting with K & B as follows:

I was entirely ignorant of the fact that Kessel and Bauman were considering me. .. . I decided to apply for the job feeling 1 would have greater opportunities in this new field than in New York. A little strategy was necessary, I felt, to impress my prospective employers with my importance, so I allowed a mustache to grow and, on the day of my interview with Bauman, I borrowed a large, sparkling diamond ring from Doc Willat. This, I figured, would give the impression that I was a man of means who did not have to work for the paltry $60 a week which was my munificent salary at IMP.

This ruse worked. When Bauman offered him $100 a week, Ince "hesitated" and Bauman raised it to $150—with a three-month guarantee—and gave Ince some stock in the Sennett Keystone comedy unit to boot.

When Ince left IMP he took actress Ethel Grandin and property-master Charles Weston along with him. They arrived in Los Angeles, together with Mrs. Ince and Ray C. Smallwood, a cameraman, in October 1911.

The "studio" in Edendale had been a grocery store and consisted of a small office and laboratory, and, in the back yard, a crude open-air stage without even a muslin overhead sunlight diffuser. A shed served as a scene dock and a nearby bungalow—rented—as a dressing room. "The sets," Ince said later, "consisted of a few pieces of very bad furniture and one backdrop with a flock of birds supposedly in flight. The furniture was bad enough, but when I thought of stationary birds poised in mid-air as the backdrop for a moving picture, I gave way to a moment of discouragement."

But he began a picture almost immediately. It was called The New Cook and starred Ethel Grandin. When it got so cold that the actors' breath was visible, Ince made the actors smoke throughout the scene and the actresses keep their mouths shut.

Ince knew he would have to do something spectacular if he were to establish himself on more solid terms with L & B and by chance he discovered that the Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch Wild West Show, which was wintering in nearby Venice, could be hired for $2500 a week on an annual basis. Kessel and Bauman agreed, and thereby acquired a complete company of cowboys, Indians, long-horn cattle, buffalo, tepees, stage-coaches, wagons and other equipment for the making of large-scale Westerns.

They were also smart enough to transfer their production activities from Edendale to 18,000 acres of land along the Pacific Coast north of Santa Monica. The Edendale lot continued to serve as a processing laboratory and was turned over to Mack Sennett upon his arrival on the Coast, and ultimately became the Keystone Studio.

The first film made with the 101 Ranch troupe was War on the Plains, a 2-reeler also called Across the Plains. It was released in January 1912. William Eagleshirt, a fullblooded Sioux, and Ray Myers, who had collaborated with Ince on the script, played the principal roles. It got good reviews, was liked by the public, and encouraged Ince to make more 2-reelers of the same sort: Battle of the Red Men, Blazing the Trail, Indian Massacre, and The Lieutenant's Last Fight.

In the summer of '12 Ince directed and produced his most ambitious film to date, a 3-reeler called Custer's Last Fight, which depicted the events leading up to the battle of the Little Big Horn, and the battle itself. Francis Ford, brother of John Ford, played Custer, and the supporting cast included William Eagleshirt, Ann Little, J. Barney Sherry, Grace Cunard and Charles K. French. The large-scale action used hundreds of extras—Indians and soldiers. The script was by Richard V. Spencer, then Ince's principal writer, and the camerawork was Ray Smallwood's. Custer's Last Fight was re-issued in '25 by an independent distributor who "built" it up to 5 reels.

Using real Sioux Indians brought Ince some unforeseen problems. Since they were wards of the US government, he had to arrange with the local Indian agent not only for their care, but also for their schooling. Though docile, the Indians were averse to work, and they "appropriated" such brightly colored props as rugs, blankets, etc. They also got drunk, and local saloon keepers would call Ince in the middle of the night and complain that some of his "wards" were disturbing the peace.

"I left the house every morning at 7.30 for my day's work," Ince wrote years later. "I would direct and shoot all day and return home at seven in the evening, eat a hurried dinner, and start preparing for the activities of the next day. The result of each day's work had to be carefully inspected. My projection room was the kitchen of my small Hollywood bungalow, and, with Mrs. Ince's assistance, I would cut and assemble scenes taken the day before. As she unwound the reel I examined the negative, and, as it ran through my fingers, it was caught in a clothes basket on the floor.

"When the film was cut and assembled I would turn my attention to stories and would work until midnight writing scenarios for the following day. With my wife's help I managed to keep my production up to par. . . . Life was fraught with many discouragements and anxieties for those who were engaged in the early motion picture industry. There were many disheartening problems and set backs. Each step of the way had to be tried, mistakes in judgment and execution, the results of experimentation, had to be corrected, and new ideas tried out."

To meet the ever increasing demand for more pictures, Ince made Francis Ford a director of a second production unit. Ford, an experienced actor on both stage and screen, had previously directed movies for Gaston Melies in Texas. He was an independent fellow with definite ideas of how pictures should be made, and Ince, to make sure Ford did as he was told, had Richard Spencer prepare a detailed continuity—in fact, a shooting script—in which each scene was carefully outlined, and camera placements, props, costumes, make-up and special effects, were specified. Ince screened the scenes after Ford staged them and edited the final prints.

Not long before his death several years ago, Francis Ford wryly remarked that if one of the pictures he had made turned out better than expected, Ince had no scruples about claiming the credit for the direction, and often for the story as well.

In June '12 Kessel and Bauman had merged their holding company—the New York Motion Picture Co.—with Carl Laemmle's IMP to form the Universal Film Mfg. Co. Personalities clashed at once and open war began, with both sides claiming breach of contract and attempting to invade the other's territory and upset production. While making one picture Ince strapped on a six-shooter and posted a prop Civil War cannon loaded with scrap iron at the mouth of the Santa Ynez canyon to ward off Laemmle's men.

An agreement was finally reached. Laemmle was awarded $17,000 damages and the "101 Bison" trademark, and obtained Francis Ford's services as actor and director. Whereupon Kessel and Bauman aligned their NYMP Co. with Mutual Film Exchanges, Inc., headed by John R. Freuler and Harry M. Aitken. Following the break with Laemmle, Ince issued his pictures under such trade names as Broncho, Domino and Kay-Bee.

To replace Francis Ford, Kessel and Bauman sent out Charles Giblyn and Scott Sidney, who had been directing Reliance pictures in New York City. Ince also increased the directing staff by hiring Reginald Barker, Raymond B. West, Burton King, Walter Edwards, Jay Hunt and Richard Stanton (the last three also appeared as actors). Most of these men had acted on the stage, and West had worked in films for several years as a cameraman and assistant director. Barker was the only one who had directed (Broncho Billy Anderson Westerns for Essanay). A Scotsman, he became Ince's best and most prolific director. His forte was action stories with tough virile characters.

Ince's most important acquisition around this time was C. Gardner Sullivan, whom many still regard as one of the finest scriptwriters ever in the business. He hailed from Minnesota, had worked on newspapers in St. Paul and New York City, and became a scenario writer by accident after he sold a story to the old Edison Company and discovered he could make more money that way than by pounding a newspaper typewriter. Ince bought some of his early stories, and was smart enough to get Sullivan to work for him exclusively. It was one of Ince's most fortunate moves.

By '13 Ince was producing, in addition to Westerns, stories about the Civil War and the American melting pot. Their titles indicate the contents: The Sharpshooter, Widow Moloney's Faith, The Banshee, Eileen of Erin, Banzai, For Love of the Flag, A Military Judas, The Witch of Salem, A Child of War, A Highland Romance. Ince made more than 150 films in '13. A fairly representative group of them have survived (and were recently shown on the Movie Museum tv program). From such 2-reelers as The Drummer of the Eighth, Little Dove's Romance, In the Tennessee Hills, The Quakeress, The Woman, Past Redemption, With Lee in Virginia, Blazing the Trail and Silent Heroes it is possible to gain an insight into the American public Ince was making movies for. Each of those little films had a definite story line; clear characterization; spectacular action; good production values; and clear, sharp photography.

Ince's most creative period was from 1912 to '14. Unfortunately, some of his best work in this period has been lost. There are no known prints of his first feature, The Battle of Gettysburg, but a copy of its script is still in existence in New York. The detail in The Battle of Gettysburg scenario is noteworthy—dialogue is even written in for the principal characters. Instructions to the director are specific down to the facial expressions of the actors. The script for The Battle of Gettysburg has an exact breakdown of the battle scenes and instructions to the cameraman for the angles to be covered by no less than eight cameras.

It will be remembered that Bauman gave Ince some stock in Sennett's Keystone Company. Ince and Sennett became good friends, and Ince was always more than willing to do Mack a favor. When Ince shot big action spectacles he'd invite Sennett to come to the Santa Ynez canyon and take advantage of the props, sets and mobs of extras. Sennett did so while The Battle of Gettysburg was shooting and on its sets put Ford Sterling, Mabel Normand et al through their paces in Cohen Saves the Flag, an interesting 1-reeler that is still available.

The large-scale action shown in this Sennett film proves The Battle of Gettysburg must have been an impressive picture. It was released in 5 reels in December '13 by Mutual. It is possibly the only feature picture Ince ever directed. Charles Giblyn and Raymond B. West assisted him.

Ince's next 5-reel feature was The Wrath of the Gods. It was begun in January '14 and completed in about three weeks. The story, by C. Gardner Sullivan, centered around a shipwreck and volcanic eruption in Japan which required a number of special effects. Sessue Hayakawa made his screen debut in this picture, as did his wife, Tsuru Aoki. Frank Borzage, now a prominent Hollywood director, played the American hero. Reginald Barker directed and Raymond B. West handled the special effects. A print of The Wrath of the Gods was recently acquired by Don Malkames, a cinematographer who is also a cinema collector. Ince is said to have considered The Wrath of the Gods one of his best films.

Ince's next feature, The Typhoon ('14) , also starred Hayakawa. It was an adaptation, by Charles Swickard, of the stage melodrama in which Hayakawa had been appearing when Ince "discovered" him. Reginald Barker directed. Vachel Lindsay thought Hayakawa should have been more effectively used—"dooming a talent like Mr. Hayakawa to the task of interpreting the Japanese spy does not conduce to accord with Japan, however the technique may move us to admiration." There is a print of The Typhoon at the George Eastman House in Rochester.

Sessue Hayakawa was Ince's first important star, and the only Ince star who is still prominent in motion pictures. But he was not properly developed by Ince, who, after The Wrath of the Gods and The Typhoon, relegated him to a series of 2-reelers. After nine months of them Hayakawa left Ince and joined Lasky (now Paramount), where his career flourished.

Some of the Japanese actors in The Wrath of the Gods, The Typhoon and other Ince films later became prominent in the Japanese film industry. Thomas Kurihara, Yutake (Jack) Abe and Henry Kotani became directors (Abe still directs). Until recently Kotani was employed as a cameraman by the US Army Signal Corps in Tokyo. Among the American directors Ince trained, or helped to develop, were Fred Niblo, Henry King, Lambert Hillyer, Victor Schertzinger, Jerome Storm, Irvin V. Willat, John Griffith Wray, Roy William Neill, Rowland V. Lee and Frank Borzage.

Meanwhile the sprawling movie lot at the mouth of the Santa Ynez canyon was growing into what was properly known as "Inceville." It resembled a rough construction camp, for the 101 Ranch Show's cowboys and Indians lived in tents and cabins up and down the canyon. Stables and corrals had been hastily erected for the livestock. The permanent residents had planted vegetable gardens.

Interiors were photographed on an open air stage over which hung muslin cloth to diffuse the sunlight. On rainy days tarpaulins were suspended over the sets (they were also used to shut out sunlight during the photographing of night scenes). Several pictures were usually being shot on this stage simultaneously and care had to be taken to avoid mixing the companies.

Robert Brunton, formerly a scenic artist with Sir Henry Irving and with Oliver Morosco, was the art director and production manager. Up and down the canyon, and along the beach, he had erected sets depicting a New York street, a frontier fort, a Western town, and what have you. Charles Weston, the property master, had assembled a varied collection of props especially rich in Civil War cannons, muskets, rifles, pistols, sabers, flags, guidons, drums, etc., most of which were authentic relics purchased from Francis Bannerman's military surplus store, and some of which are still being used in Hollywood productions.

Ince's films were noted for clear photography and technological innovation. The newly developed Bell and Howell turret camera was used on almost all Ince films after 1912. Under the aegis of Chief Cameraman Ray Smallwood and Irvin V. Willat some good cinematographers were trained, including Chester Lyons, Robert Doeran, James Crosby, Charles Kaufman, Robert S. Newhard, Otis Cove, J. D. (Dev) Jennings, Joseph H. August, Paul E. Eagler and Clyde de Vinna. August, later William S. Hart's cameraman, is best remembered today for the photography in Ford's The Informer. Eagler currently operates a company that does special photographic effects for independent Hollywood producers.

William S. Hart, Ince's most lucrative "property," was not discovered by Tom Ince (see Films in Review, April '55). Nor did Ince have much to do with the development of Hart's screen personality. In fact, it was with considerable misgiving that Ince agreed to put Hart in a picture at all. But it is to his credit that he did give Hart his opportunity, and he certainly deserves some credit for the initial success of Hart's wonderful films. However, as time passed and Hart became more experienced, Ince had less and less to do with Hart's pictures, even though he is credited as producer, or supervisor, on all of them between 1914 and '18.

The Italian, another of Ince's most notable early films, was produced and released early in '15. It was a realistic study of immigrant life in the slums of New York City. George Beban had the title role, and Barker directed from a script by Sullivan. There is a paper print of The Italian in the Library of Congress. Also of The Cup of Life ('15), and Rumplestiltskin ('15), with Clyde Tracy and Betty Burbridge.

On July 20, '15, Kessel, Bauman and Harry M. Aitken, met secretly with Ince, Mack Sennett and D. W. Griffith, in the Harvey House, La Junta, Colorado, and arranged for the formation of the Triangle Film Corporation. The name evolved from the three production units to be run by Ince, Griffith and Sennett. Their prime purpose was to stop the growing monopoly of Adolph Zukor. Triangle quickly contracted with such stage stars as Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, DeWolf Hopper, Constance Collier, Frank Kennan, Willie Collier, Dustin Farnum, Billie Burke, Raymond Hitchcock, Orrin Johnson and Willard Mack. Also a stage actor named Douglas Fairbanks. Ince, of course, brought William S. Hart to Triangle.

On September 23, '15, a program of Triangle's first films opened, at a $2 top, in the Knickerbocker Theater in New York City. The pictures were My Valet, starring Raymond Hitchcock and directed by Sennett; The Lamb, starring Douglas Fairbanks, directed by Christy Cabanne, and supervised by Griffith; and The Iron Strain, starring Dustin Farnum, Louise Glaum and Enid Markey, directed by Reginald Barker, and supervised by Ince.

Alas, Triangle's high-salaried stage stars were unknown in the US hinterland and had little or no box office pull. For example, Billie Burke was paid $40,000 for eight weeks' work on Ince's Peggy (early '16 and directed by Charles Giblyn). That was the largest salary ever paid a screen artist for a single performance up to that time. On the other hand, William S. Hart continued to receive a relatively small salary even though his pictures were bringing in most of Triangle's revenue. Ince, who owned Hart's contract, did nothing about raising his salary and this was one of the factors that led to the break between them.

It was also in ' 15 that a real estate promoter named Harry Culver offered free land to anyone who would build a motion picture studio in a development he was sponsoring between Venice and Los Angeles and calling Culver City. Ince took him up on it and was given some acreage off Washington Boulevard (he wanted to get out of Santa Ynez canyon because of the fog from the ocean, the constant hazard of brush fires, and the sand which blew into the lab and ruined prints). Ince was in the process of building a studio on Culver's gift site at the time Triangle was formed and Triangle took over the new studio. But Ince retained the deed to the land. The new studio, completed in January '16, consisted of five large glass enclosed stages and supporting buildings spread over some 16 acres of land. This studio is now the main part of the great MGM lot.

Although the bulk of Triangle's production, and most of Ince's films, were made there, Hart continued making his films at Inceville, Griffith worked in his Fine Arts Studio at 4500 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, and Sennett still used the old, but greatly expanded and improved, Edendale lot.

In 1916 Woodrow Wilson's re-election campaign slogan, "He kept us out of war," gave Ince the idea for a special production he called Civilization. It was written by C. Gardner Sullivan and revolved around a devastating war between two mythical countries. Avowedly anti-war in theme, the foreword to Civilization stated: "This is an allegorical story about war—it does not concern itself about which side is right or wrong, but deals with those ranks which are paying the grim penalty—the ranks of humanity. . . ." The foreword was signed by Ince, who expressed his "thanks" to Raymond B. West, Reginald Barker, J. Parker Read Jr., Scot Sidney et al for their "assistance" in producing Civilization. The film is said to have been directed mainly by West. Irvin Willat and Robert Newhard were the cinematographers.

Ince took an active part in selling and promoting Civilization. He personally showed the film to President Wilson, who, it was alleged, praised it highly. [President Wilson appeared with Ince in the foreword. They were photographed in '16 at Wilson's summer home "Shadow Lawn," by Lambert Hillyer.] When it opened in New York City on June 2, '16, Billie Burke, then working for Ince, "fainted" in the audience to create publicity.

Civilization does not hold up well today and is actually a very unimportant film. It is naive and almost ludicrous in both conception and execution. But at the time it was well received and made money. It also had an interesting aftermath: William Cochrane, press representative of the Democratic National Convention, claimed the picture contributed to Wilson's victory over Charles Evans Hughes.

What sort of a man was Tom Ince?

He seems to have been different things to many people. He has been described as ambitious, aggressive, dynamic, egotistical, emotional, irascible and intractable. If we can believe Bill Hart, he was ruthless, conniving and selfish (Hart also says in his autobiography Ince had considerable personal charm and that they resolved their differences not long before Ince died). Mack Sennett liked Ince and hints in his book, King of Comedy, that he was something of a philanderer. Lambert Hillyer, who directed many films for Ince, thinks "Ince was a good organizer who knew how to pick capable men and to use them correctly . . . men like C. Gardner Sullivan, for example."

Harry C. Carr, writing in the July '15 issue of Photoplay, described Ince this way: "His face is round and strong with a small restless mouth and penetrating gray eyes. His voice is quick, sharp, clear and incisive. The secret of Ince's big stuff is very simple. He has the unusual ability to visualize a scenario. He can see what things are going to look like. He doesn't figure things out; he thinks in mental pictures. He has one of the peculiar minds that think in terms of photography."

Ince often worked far into the night, in his private projection room, editing and re-editing film. He would frequently change the original story in order to evolve something more logical and convincing. John B. Richie, one of his associates, described him at work: "Something of his own vital personality is recognizable in every one of his pictures. While sitting as a silent spectator watching the evolution of a picture on the screen he will suddenly start up, gesticulate, emotionalize, blurt out subtitles and corrections faster than a stenographer could record them and in one live instant change the fate of a picture. . . . He was one of the first to perceive that screen drama must consist of vivid, flashing incidents, hurrying restlessly on to a logical and cumulative crisis."

Ince made a few revealing comments about himself: "Personally, I count the years I spent on the stage before I became a director and then a producer as the greatest single factor contributing toward whatever measure of success I may have achieved. No one except the public orator knows the glow that comes to the actor who is 'pulling his house' with him. That taste of crowd psychology taught me to recognize to a hair-breadth what shades of emotional acting most appeal to people in the orchestra seats and those up top in the peanut gallery; taught me just when to strike for a 'big laugh' or when to tone down a 'gag' which was dragging; taught me how to judge story values."

Here is what he had to say about direction: "The ideal director is one who, having pictured a scene in his mind, having tested it by putting himself into the various roles and getting reactions natural to those characters, still allows his cast enough scope to bring out additional touches that will add spontaneity to the interpretation and dramatic upbuilding. . . . Primarily the director must know life, but he must know, too, how to project life, not in narrative form, but by selected dramatic moments, each of which builds towards a definite crisis or climax that will bring a burst of emotional response from every audience. .. . He is the personification of every character in his drama as he directs each scene, carrying the story development so closely in his consciousness that he is a dozen persons at once. . . . But, above all else, a director must excel in coaxing, cajoling and spurring his actors on to heights of artistry. .. . He must teach them the a-b-c of movement: that bodily positions bring definite emotional reactions (this is the reason for 'walking' parts before thinking them) just as emotions and thought result in physical postures. Exhilaration of spirit brings the out-thrown chest, the outspread arms and open, welcoming hands. The reception of a new unwelcome thought is an unconscious backward movement or recession, perhaps a fending-off gesture with the hands to protect the mind and body from what may be unwelcome."

On movie pantomime:

"Do any but those who are intimately familiar with the stage world and its art realize the tremendous loss of power the actor of the silent drama suffers because his voice is stilled? After all, is there any ability more remarkable than that of the gifted actor who, without the aid of the emotion-arousing voice and the power of flesh and blood presence, can so project a characterization that the figments of some author's brain come to life for audiences gathered from every walk of life and numbering millions? Thought becomes reality—that is the world's greatest marvel.

To act a part an actor must feel it deeply, and so carry this feeling in his consciousness that, when he plays the scene, his reactions are instinctive. The pantomime of eyes, mouth, hands and bodily movement will seem unconscious if the actor is thinking and feeling the part. . . . It is only when the screen actor has become a past master of the art of pantomime that the audience is lulled into the oblivion of illusion."

Typical of the films Ince made during World War I for Triangle were: The Beggar of Cawnpore, a story of the Sepoy mutiny of 1857 in India, starring H. B. Warner and directed by Charles Swickard; D'Artagnan, with Orrin Johnson, Dorothy Dalton, Arthur Maude and Louise Glaum, also directed by Swickard; Wolf Woman, with Louise Glaum, directed by Walter Edwards; Happiness, with Enid Bennett, directed by Reginald Barker; Not My Sister, with Bessie Barriscale; Flame of the Yukon, with Dorothy Dalton, directed by Charles Miller; and The Pinch Hitter and The Clodhopper, starring Charles Ray and directed by Victor Schertzinger.

The Coward, one of Triangle's '15 releases, is sometimes revived by film societies, but except for fine performances by Frank Keenan and Charles Ray, it is not really impressive. Film historian Lewis Jacobs called it one of Ince's "soul fights!"

Charles Ray was one of the most interesting and successful players Ince ever developed. Before joining Ince as a stock actor in '12, Ray had played in road companies and vaudeville on the West Coast. He worked in all types of films until Ince hit on the innocent Ray played so well. Ray was one of the few true interpreters of rural America there have been on the screen. His work was neither satire, nor a glorification. One of the main titles in The Pinch Hitter aptly illustrates the character Ray portrayed: "Joel Parker of Turkey Creek, Vermont—Orfull bashful and sorta dummified. . . ." Ray's popularity was extinguished in the jazz-mad '20s. His films stand up very well, and even today are an entertaining bit of Americana.

Victor Schertzinger, who directed Ray's first rural dramas, was another talent Ince used successfully. He had been born in the Pennsylvania-Dutch region and was a concert violinist with John Philip Sousa, Marcella Sembrich and Emma Calve, before he attained a measure of success by writing arrangements for Broadway musical comedies. Ince noticed him leading the Belasco Theater orchestra in Los Angeles and hired him to write scores for Peggy, Civilization and other films.

Schertzinger was one of the most gifted directors ever developed by Ince and is best remembered as the director of Grace Moore's One Night of Love ('34), The Mikado ('39), and the highly successful Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road to Singapore ('40). Despite his concentration on directing films, Schertzinger never completely abandoned music, and often wrote scores and original music for his own productions.

However successful Ince was in bringing out the talent of others, he was not successful in his relations with Kessel, Bauman and Aitken. He resented it when they tried to tell him what to do, and once, when they threatened to fire him, he secreted in safe deposit vaults throughout Los Angeles the negatives of films he was working on. Finally Aitken discovered a loophole in Triangle's contract with him. But Ince had two aces up his sleeve.

He owned the land the Triangle studio was on, and he owned William S. Hart's contract.

The upshot was that Triangle paid Ince $250,000, and Ince, using his contract with Hart as bait, contracted with Adolph Zukor to produce for Paramount-Artcraft. There were really three separate contracts: the first stipulated that Hart would make 16 pictures for at least $150,000 each; the second that Ince would himself produce two "special productions" a year for at least $50,000 each; and the third that Charles Ray, Dorothy Dalton and Enid Bennett would each make a series of films for $35,000 each. The second and third contracts were to be null and void if Hart were not delivered to Paramount-Artcraft within 30 days of their signing.

After Ince broke with Triangle he leased Biograph's West Coast lot while he constructed a new studio in Culver City down the street from Triangle. He moved there in the Fall of '18. Its main administration building was designed to resemble Washington's home, Mount Vernon. After Ince's death Cecil B. De Mille made King of Kings there, and Pathe and RKO Radio subsequently owned it. For many years David O. Selznick rented space in it, and made Gone With the Wind there, and used the "Mt. Vernon" front as his trade mark. Desilu Productions is the present owner.

Ince turned pictures out in quick succession for Zukor—most of them topical films capitalizing on World War I, then in progress. They included: The Kaiser's Shadow, directed by Roy William Niell; The Zepplin's Last Raid, directed by Irvin V. Willat; Viva la France, with Dorothy Dalton, directed by Neill; False Faces with Lon Chaney and Henry B. Walthall, directed by Willat; Claws of the Hun, with Charles Ray, directed by Willat; 23^1/2 Hours Leave, a successful wartime comedy with Douglas MacLean, directed by Henry King; Carmen of the Klondyke, with Dorothy Dalton, directed by Barker; Behind the Door, with Wallace Beery and Hobart Bosworth, directed by Willat; and such Charles Ray vehicles as String Beans, directed by Schertzinger, and Hayfoot Strawfoot, Homer Comes Home, and The Busher, all directed by Jerome Storm.

William S. Hart continued to work in a separate studio and turned out some of his finest films: The Narrow Trail, Blue Blazes Rawden, Wolves of the Rail, The Border Wireless, Branding Broadway and Riddle Gawne—all directed by Lambert Hillyer. Although Ince was an equal partner in these pictures and is credited on the screen as the "producer," both Hart and Hillyer have said that Ince had nothing to do with their production. Ince and Hart no longer spoke to each other.

Their basic differences derived from Ince's refusal to share with Hart the tremendous profits he reaped from Hart's films. But they parted after a quarrel over Hart's horse Fritz, to which Ince had taken a violent dislike. When Hart completed his 16 pictures for Artcraft he formed his own company, and, with Hart gone, Ince had no club over Zukor. As everyone expected, those two ambitious men were soon at loggerheads, and by the middle of '19 Zukor had forced Ince out of Paramount-Artcraft.

Whereupon Ince distributed his pictures through Metro. But in October of '19 he formed a distribution company—Associated Producers, Inc.—with Mack Sennett, Marshall Neilan, Allan Dwan, George Loane Tucker, Maurice Tourneur, and his long time associate, J. Parker Read, Jr. [Read was selling advertising in Havana when Laemmle sent a company to Cuba and was hired by Doc Willat as an interpreter. After which Read went to work for Ince.] An advertisement in Wid's "Year Book" for 1920 read in part: "Associated Producers are seven men of definitive, achieved reputations and accomplishments in motion picture production. These seven men decided after long years of paying toll and tribute to distributors to cut beyond those distributors who used them to bolster up weak directors and trivial stars. They own their own personal organization for the production, release and sale of their pictures directly to the exhibitors of the country. . . ." By September '22 Associated Producers was forced to merge with First National and Ince then became an independent producer releasing through that company. His pictures did well at the box office.

Ince had wealth, and a position in the motion picture industry, but his best filmmaking was behind him. Very few of his films in the '20s were of more than passing interest. Hail the Woman, a "special production" of '21. was called old fashioned by most of the critics. Its large cast included Florence Vidor, Madge Bellamy, Theodore Roberts, Lloyd Hughes and Tully Marshall. John Griffith Wray, whom Ince recruited from the theatre and made his favorite, directed from a script by C. Gardner Sullivan. The Cup of Life ('21), directed by Rowland V. Lee, was a re-make of Ince's old '15 success. The Hottentot ('22), a racing comedy adapted from the Willie Collier stage success, could not, via sub-titles, convey the wit of the play. Skin Deep ('22), directed by Lambert Hillyer, and starring Milton Sills and Florence Vidor, a melodrama about a convict escaping from prison only to discover it was engineered by his wife and her lover so they could frame him for murder, had an excellent sequence in which a stunt man (doubling Milton Sills) leapt from the wall of the prison to the top of a moving train and then to an airplane by means of a rope ladder hung from the cockpit.

In '22 Mrs. Wallace Reid (Dorothy Davenport), widow of the actor who had died from the effects of dope addiction, supplied the idea for one of Ince's most unusual films, Human Wreckage ('23). It is one of the few American films influenced by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. To show the harmful effects of narcotics it had a surrealistic sequence to depict an addict under the influence of drugs. Bizarre settings and distorted, diffused camera work were used to heighten the overall atmosphere. John Griffith Wray directed, C. Gardner Sullivan wrote the scenario, and Henry Sharp did the imaginative photography. Such public figures as Dr. R. B. von Klein Smid, President of the University of Southern California; Mayor George E. Cryer of Los Angeles; Judge Beryl Bledsoe of the 12th Federal District Court; and John P. Carver, a former US Internal Revenue Collector, not only endorsed the film but played small parts in it.

Anna Christie ('23) was the first Eugene O'Neill play to reach the screen (see Films in Review, June-July '58). It received laudatory reviews from virtually all of the critics. Robert E. Sherwood said it was "a credit to Mr. Ince and to the movies," and "Variety" reported that "Anna Christie has the honor of being the first picture of the 1923-24 season to be chosen for a special showing before the National Board of Review, which makes a specialty of picking the exceptional photoplays of the year. Anna Christie proved worthy of the honor." Blanche Sweet was praised for her forthright portrayal of Anna, and William Russell for his of Matt Burke, and George Marion, Sr., for his Chris, a role he had created on the stage. John Griffith Wray directed and Henry Sharp photographed.

Ince is supposed to have said: "I made that one for the highbrow critics who say Tom Ince can't make anything but box office pictures."

Two comedies, Galloping Fish, directed by Del Andrews, and Ten Ton Love, directed by John Griffith Wray, were released at the beginning of '24. The first featured some of the old Keystone Comedy players—Ford Sterling, Louise Fazenda, Syd Chaplin and Chester Conklin. The "big Ince scene" was a great flood, adroitly filmed on the Colorado River, in which a circus full of animals was washed away. Ten Ton Love was about an elephant with uncanny intelligence and its climax was the destruction of a circus big top by a cyclone. Next came a melodrama, Those Who Dance, directed by Lambert Hillyer, a good gangster story with Blanche Sweet, Warner Baxter, Bessie Love, and Matthew Betz.

Charles Ray, who had left Ince to form his own producing company in '20, and had failed after an expensive and financially disastrous version of The Courtship of Miles Standish, returned to Ince in '24. His first picture under his new contract, Dynamite Smith, was directed by Ralph Ince, and had Ray in his familiar country-boy role. Ray's next picture, Percy, directed by Roy William Neill, was released after Ince's death.

During the summer of '24 Ince sent his brother John, and B. Reeves (Breezy) Easen, to Canada to film a buffalo stampede for the climax of a large scale Western to be called The Vanishing Frontier. They brought back such disjointed and unsatisfactory material that Lambert Hillyer, at that time directing Barbara Frietchie for Ince, was asked to take over. Hillyer did not think he could salvage anything from the footage and declined. The picture was never completed by Ince. However, the material was sold for stock shots and has been used in several films made by other producers.

Barbara Frietchie and a picture called Enticement were Ince's last. The former, released a few weeks before his death, was expertly directed by Lambert Hillyer, and starred Florence Vidor and Edmund Lowe. It was based on the old Clyde Fitch play and was notable for some well-staged and beautifully photographed—by Henry Sharp—Civil War battle scenes. Enticement, released several months after Ince's death, was a triangle story set in the French Alps (it was shot at Lake Louise in Canada), with a well-staged avalanche sequence for a climax. Mary Astor, Clive Brook and Ian Keith starred under George Archainbaud's direction. According to Mary Astor, in her recent autobiography, she attended a showing of Enticement in NYC with her then romantic interest, John Barrymore, and he upbraided her for appearing in such "trash."

Late in '24 there were rumors that Ince was about to conclude a very lucrative deal with William Randolph Hearst to produce the Marion Davies-Cosmopolitan films.

It was probably this prospective association with Hearst, plus the fact that Hearst was with Ince when he was fatally stricken, that gave rise to many misleading and inaccurate stories about Ince's so-called "mysterious death." A few sensation-seeking writers have even gone so far as to claim that Ince was murdered.

This story was started by a rival of Hearst's Los Angeles newspaper which published a number of suppositions and innuendoes immediately following Ince's death. These irresponsible charges were never substantiated, nor was any evidence ever presented to the authorities to prove that Ince's death was the result of foul play. In view of the number of persons involved, it is difficult to believe a giant cover-up could have occurred and been perpetuated for 35 years.

Ince was fatally stricken while on a weekend cruise to San Diego on his yacht "Oneida." Hearst, Marion Davies, and other celebrities were guests.

The San Diego "Union" of Nov. 21, '24, reported Ince's death as follows: "[the] illness . . . began on his yacht in San Diego harbor Sunday night [November 16] when celebrities gathered to help him celebrate his 43rd birthday with a party that sent him to his berth racked with pain. Marion Davies, Seena Owen and lesser lights were in the gay party . . . William Randolph Hearst is mentioned as one of those present . . . Dr. Daniel Carson Goodman, West Coast Manager of Cosmopolitan Productions, said to have the backing of Hearst, was another. . . . Monday morning a tender from the "Oneida" landed at the West Santa Fe dock and Ince and two others got out. They went to the railroad station where Ince and Goodman, as his companion, boarded the train. The other member of the party did not go with Ince and Goodman. When the train reached Del Mar the porter summoned a car to take the sick producer to the Stratford Inn. It was hinted that he had suffered an attack of indigestion while on a hunting trip in Mexico.

At the Stratford Inn a physician [Dr. Truman Parker and later Dr. Horace Lazelle, both of La Jolla] was called and when he responded Ince told him he had been on a party in a yacht in San Diego harbor. Ince, it is reported, told the doctor that he had eaten heavily and smoked a great deal. He complained of terrific pains in the abdomen. He is also understood to have said there was plenty of liquor and that the man who furnished it could well afford to get the best.

The doctor called again Monday night and found Ince greatly improved. There was no evidence of food or liquor poisoning, he said, but he advised the producer to stay and rest several days. The doctor then left saying he would call Tuesday [November 18] morning.

But in the meantime Mrs. Ince had arrived by motor car with her 15-year-old son, William, and went to the bedside of her husband. Later Monday evening Dr. Ida C. Glasgow, said to be the Ince family physician, came to Del Mar in response to a call and the local physician was told his services were no longer needed. . . .

Despite the [local] doctor's advice to rest for several days, arrangements were made to take him North. A special car was attached to the train leaving here [San Diego] and an ambulance was dispatched. The ambulance took Ince to the special car which arrived . . . attached to the Santa Fe train.

On this car Ince made the trip to Los Angeles Tuesday and reached home early in the afternoon.

He died at five o'clock in the morning of November 19, '24, in his home, "Dias Dorados" (Golden Days), in Benedict Canyon, Beverly Hills. At his bedside were his wife, his three sons—William 15, Thomas Jr. 11, and Richard 9—and his two brothers. According to his own physician, death was due to angina pectoris induced by acute indigestion.

A small street in the rear of his old studio in Culver City has been named Ince Avenue.