November 21, 1924—Three Hawaiian guitarists played at the funeral of Hollywood player Thomas Ince, but the man who had just made a deal with him and thrown a birthday party for him was not among the industry friends who gathered for the sad event.
Those were only the latest of the bizarre, inexplicable events surrounding his hurried departure a few days before from the yacht of William Randolph Hearst. The incident sparked a three-quarters-of-a-century scandal and mystery involving the tabloid publisher; his mistress, silent-film comedienne Marion Davies; and Charlie Chaplin, who had been paying Davies a great deal of attention.
The Ince case was addressed directly onscreen in Peter Bogdanovich’s fine 2002 drama, The Cat’s Meow, as well as in a mystery co-written by none other than Heart’s granddaughter, Patricia Hearst, Murder in San Simeon. What fewer people realize is that it formed a long-unknown backdrop to the controversial, thinly fictionalized version of the publisher’s life, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.
Ince ended up on the 280-ft. yacht, the Oneida—subsequently nicknamed by Hollywood wags “William Randolph’s Hearse”—because Hearst and Davies wanted to throw a party in honor of his 43rd birthday. There was no reason for the producer-director not to come—the vivacious Davies threw the type of galas that people talked about for the rest of their lives, and Hearst wanted him in a good mood as they moved to conclude a major business deal. (Hearst desired to use Ince’s Culver City studios as a base for Cosmopolitan Productions, the production company he’d used to propel Davies to stardom.)
In his epic life of the publisher, The Chief, David Nasaw sounds like one of those exasperated historians forced to slap down innumerable far-fetched conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination in Dallas: “Today, seventy-five years after Ince’s death, there is still no credible evidence that he was murdered or that Hearst was involved in any foul play.”
I, for one, am also impatient about every cockamamie conspiracy theory that comes down the pike. Unfortunately, so many odd things happened after Ince stepped aboard the Oneida on the 15th that it’s impossible not to believe that something happened and that somebody wanted badly to hide it. The only question is, what was being hidden?
Hearst’s initial statement claimed that Ince had, after that night, complained of acute indigestion. A doctor took him off the yacht and escorted him home, where he died a couple of days later.
Here’s the problem with this:
* Virtually none of the guests aboard that night could agree on what happened.
The Ince case was addressed directly onscreen in Peter Bogdanovich’s fine 2002 drama, The Cat’s Meow, as well as in a mystery co-written by none other than Heart’s granddaughter, Patricia Hearst, Murder in San Simeon. What fewer people realize is that it formed a long-unknown backdrop to the controversial, thinly fictionalized version of the publisher’s life, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.
Ince ended up on the 280-ft. yacht, the Oneida—subsequently nicknamed by Hollywood wags “William Randolph’s Hearse”—because Hearst and Davies wanted to throw a party in honor of his 43rd birthday. There was no reason for the producer-director not to come—the vivacious Davies threw the type of galas that people talked about for the rest of their lives, and Hearst wanted him in a good mood as they moved to conclude a major business deal. (Hearst desired to use Ince’s Culver City studios as a base for Cosmopolitan Productions, the production company he’d used to propel Davies to stardom.)
In his epic life of the publisher, The Chief, David Nasaw sounds like one of those exasperated historians forced to slap down innumerable far-fetched conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination in Dallas: “Today, seventy-five years after Ince’s death, there is still no credible evidence that he was murdered or that Hearst was involved in any foul play.”
I, for one, am also impatient about every cockamamie conspiracy theory that comes down the pike. Unfortunately, so many odd things happened after Ince stepped aboard the Oneida on the 15th that it’s impossible not to believe that something happened and that somebody wanted badly to hide it. The only question is, what was being hidden?
Hearst’s initial statement claimed that Ince had, after that night, complained of acute indigestion. A doctor took him off the yacht and escorted him home, where he died a couple of days later.
Here’s the problem with this:
* Virtually none of the guests aboard that night could agree on what happened.
* No logs, records or photos exist of the events.
* Hearst was known to keep a gun aboard the yacht.
* Only one guest that night—the doctor escorting Ince off the yacht—was formally interrogated by the authorities.
* Ince’s body was cremated before an autopsy could be concluded.
* Ince’s widow, having received a trust fund from Hearst, took off for Europe as soon as she could after the cremation.
* One guest, Louella Parsons, movie editor for the New York American, insisted she had not been in attendance, even though she had been seen at the studio, waiting to depart for the yacht. Hearst rewarded the extraordinarily ambitious Parsons for her see-no-evil stance with a lifetime contract.
* Another yacht guest, actress Margaret Livingston—Ince’s mistress—had her salary raised afterward.
Most of the subsequent speculation about Ince’s fate resulted from three factors: a) the extremely cozy relationship between Davies and Chaplin (which even Nasaw catalogs at some length); b) Hearst’s realization of, and jealousy over, this; and c) the paranoia of Hearst, one of the inventors of modern tabloid journalism, that his beloved Davies—not to mention the wife he would not leave and did not wish to hurt—would be badly damaged by scandal.
So, what did happen? Take your pick, but just remember: In Hollywood, whatever you hear, no matter how unlikely, there’s at least an 80% chance it could be true:
* Hearst hired an assassin to shoot Ince. (This theory was credited by later San Simeon guest Herman Mankiewicz, who used it in a screenplay called American—which, once Orson Welles heavily edited it, became Citizen Kane. Welles dropped Mankiewicz’ incident to make it just a wee bit more possible to claim his film was not based on the publisher’s life--and, of course, avoid a libel suit.)
Most of the subsequent speculation about Ince’s fate resulted from three factors: a) the extremely cozy relationship between Davies and Chaplin (which even Nasaw catalogs at some length); b) Hearst’s realization of, and jealousy over, this; and c) the paranoia of Hearst, one of the inventors of modern tabloid journalism, that his beloved Davies—not to mention the wife he would not leave and did not wish to hurt—would be badly damaged by scandal.
So, what did happen? Take your pick, but just remember: In Hollywood, whatever you hear, no matter how unlikely, there’s at least an 80% chance it could be true:
* Hearst hired an assassin to shoot Ince. (This theory was credited by later San Simeon guest Herman Mankiewicz, who used it in a screenplay called American—which, once Orson Welles heavily edited it, became Citizen Kane. Welles dropped Mankiewicz’ incident to make it just a wee bit more possible to claim his film was not based on the publisher’s life--and, of course, avoid a libel suit.)
* Hearst found Chaplin and Davies together, went to find a gun, causing Davies to scream and Ince to come out to help—only to be accidentally shot by Hearst.
* Hearst and Ince were together, looking for medication late at night to soothe his indigestion, when Hearst mistook Ince for Chaplin and shot him.
* Hearst, Chaplin and some other guests were struggling over the gun when it went off, with one bullet entering Ince’s room and accidentally killing him.
* One of the newer theories, trotted out in a 1997 Vanity Fair article, is that Hearst accidentally stabbed Ince through the heart with Davies’ hatpin.
The rumor that threatened to blow the case wide open came from Chaplin’s secretary, Toraichi Kono, who told his wife that Ince was bleeding when he’d been taken off the yacht. San Diego D.A. Chester Kemple heard so much scuttlebutt coming out of this that he brought inb Daniel Carson Goodman, a Cosmopolitan exec who no longer actively practiced medicine but had escorted Ince off the boat, to see what he had to say.
According to another guest on the boat, Gretl Urban, Hearst had warned Goodman as Ince was taken off the boat not to let anyone know the producer had been on the Oneida. Was Hearst nervous about violating Prohibition? Or was there something more?
Aside from the issue of Hearst's own possible culpability, there was the matter of Davies' involvement. Two years before, a welcome-home party thrown by her sister on Long Island had ended suddenly when another female guest fired a bullet into the mouth of her husband. (This was most inopportune for Hearst, as he was in the middle of a gubernatorial campaign in New York.)
Gretl Urban wrote later that after getting off the boat, Goodman had "completely lost his head and fabricated so many impossible tales and acted so super-discreet that the press and everyone else ashore were convinced he was covering up some horrendous crime." But whatever he said to the San Diego authorities, the D.A. seemed disinclined to pursue the matter. Kemple issued a subsequent statement saying he was satisfied with what he heard, and that anything else related to Prohibition infractions would have to be investigated by the L.A. District Attorney. The latter never followed it up.
At this stage, given that no other witnesses were formally questioned about the events, we are unlikely to know what transpired that night. But it seems pretty clear, given the several people connected with the events who were suddenly amply rewarded, that Hearst had gone to extraordinary efforts to buy their silence.
At this stage, given that no other witnesses were formally questioned about the events, we are unlikely to know what transpired that night. But it seems pretty clear, given the several people connected with the events who were suddenly amply rewarded, that Hearst had gone to extraordinary efforts to buy their silence.
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