My wife and I watched The Cat’s Meow last night. Entertaining movie. It’s about the 1924 yacht trip that ended in Hollywood star Thomas Ince’s death.
The movie promoted the theory, which I’ve heard before, that William Randolph Hearst shot and killed Ince. Hearst had intended to kill Charlie Chaplin, also aboard the yacht, because he believed that Chaplin and Marion Davies were having an affair. (Davies was Hearst’s longtime mistress.) Because Hearst was so powerful, he was able to cover up what happened. No one was ever charged with Ince’s murder.
How much of this is a true story? I know no one talked, so it’s hard to verify what really happened. But is the Hearst-as-culprit theory the most viable, or is it just popular because he was rich and it’s a scandal? And even if he did it, is the jealousy/anti-Chaplin motive accurate?
I doubt anyone will know for sure, especially at this point.
However, I’m inclined to believe it’s just gossip. Don’t you think one of Hearst’s competitors would have loved to have the chance to send him to jail? And why should Chaplin keep quiet about it? He didn’t need Hearst.
I’ve looked a bit more. Ince lived 48 hours after being taken off the Oneida, and was attended by the family physician and his wife. If he had been shot, it was hardly likely that Hearst would have brought in any outsiders, and even less likely that Ince’s wife would have remained silent if she saw her husband had been shot.
It’s not clear that Davies and Chaplin had any relationship that Hearst had a reason to be jealous of.
I remember researching the case after I saw the movie, which is surprisingly good and the only evidence I have that Kirsten Dunst can act.
As far as I can tell, the only historically provable or even likely events in the movie is that there was a yacht trip with some Hollywood personalities aboard, no two accounts of which agree on who, and Thomas Ince died, no two accounts of which agree on how or why.
Google “Hearst Ince murder” and you’ll get hundreds of links, all of which say the same thing at greater length, but with more dirt.
Google would, indeed, have been my friend. Even snopes has covered this one.
Interesting to realize that there’s not even any consensus that there was a murder at all, let alone that Hearst was the culprit. Somehow I’d gotten the impression that the homicide was known, even if the culprits weren’t.
Also interesting to see that the movie changed one major detail: Ince wasn’t on the boat when it originally departed, but caught up to the party in San Diego. He was removed the morning after his arrival. The movie portrays him as present from the start of the voyage.
The purpose of the movie was to make an entertaining story, so they’re going to take liberties when necessary.
Ultimately, there’s no actual evidence of a crime, other than one eyewitness who said he saw Ince with a bullet hole in his head. However, without some corroboration, that could just be a mistake or a story the guy made up for the newspapers.
It’s not even a matter of taking liberties in this case.
There is no, repeat, no historical evidence for anything that took place on that yacht. Marion Davies later even denied that Chaplin and Parsons were on board. With the best will in the world, no team of scriptwriters working with a dozen historians could come up with a historically accurate script. (And if they did, by sheer accident, they would never know.)
Enjoy the movie. Read the speculation on the case. Take everything with a grain of salt. (Snopes, e.g., says that it was Louella Parsons first trip to Hollywood, but I’m sure that I’ve read it was her second.) The movie seems to be true to essential characterizations, at least, which is way more than can be said for most movies about Hollywood. (Eddie Izzard was an excellent Chaplin - I admire him more each time I see him.)
Anything past that we’ll never know.
That was my real question. I knew the movie was making up a scenario; I just wondered how much of that scenario was based on any kind of evidence. Were Chaplin and Davies gettin’ it on? Did Louella Parsons’ lifetime contract come just after the yacht trip? Was Hearst the kind of guy that would shoot someone?
Turns out we don’t even know that Ince was shot. Pity that the answer’s “dunno,” but there you have it.
And, of course, the film’s “liberties” aren’t even unique to the film – that version of events is something that’s been floating around the Hollywood rumor mill for decades. (Although the specific circumstances of Hearst mistaking Ince for Chaplin may have been the screenwriter’s invention; most of those googled accounts just hypothesize some kind of struggle.)