Thomas H. Ince was born into a family of stage actors. He appeared on the stage at age six and then worked with a number of stock companies. He made his Broadway debut when he was 15. Vaudeville offered work for him, but the work was inconsistent, so he was a lifeguard, a promoter and part-time actor. His stage career was a failure and he was headed nowhere. In 1910 he got a job with Biograph, and after one film, Carl Laemmle's Independent Motion Pictures Co. hired Ince as a director. He would go to Cuba to make films out of the reach of the Motion Pictures Patent Company--the trust that was attempting to crush all independent production companies and corner the market on film production--but his output was small. In 1911 he joined the New York Motion Picture Co. and headed to California to make westerns. he would insist that all scripts be thoroughly planned out before the filming began. This would give him the opportunity to film several scenes at the same time with assistant directors. One of those directors was Francis Ford, the brother of John Ford (I). In 1912, NYMP and Independent merged to form Universal Pictures. Ince had built a city of motion picture "sets" on a stretch of land in Santa Monica called "Inceville". Here he was able to shoot many of the outdoor locales needed for his films. It was also here that people would come to enter the movies. At the end of 1912 Ince hired William Desmond Taylor to act in his film _Counterfeiter, The (1913)_ (these two would have much more in common than just making films in the early 1920s). In 1913 Ince would make over 150 films, mostly westerns and Civil War dramas. He would also employ directors Frank Borzage, Fred Niblo, Jack Conway and Henry King (I). In 1914 Ince hired William S. Hart as an actor who could also direct his own films. Ince would make the epic Battle of Gettysburg, The (1913) and thereafter concentrate on larger films as he moved from director to producer. He would employ thousands of technicians and make movies on an assembly line method. In 1915 he would join D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett to form the Triangle Motion Picture Company. They would build a studio on Sunset Boulevard for Mabel Normand to make Mickey (1918), but she would soon leave for Goldwyn. Fortunately, Hart was a big and profitable star who kept the company afloat. In 1916 Ince would produce and direct the anti-war film Civilization (1916), which failed at the box office as the mood of the nation changed away from isolationism. Always looking for new talent, Ince would sign the hauntingly beautiful Olive Thomas, the rising young star of the Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic, to star in his films. At the end of World War I Ince broke with Triangle and joined his nemesis Adolph Zukor to form Paramount/Artcraft, and he built another studio in Culver City. Ince came up with the idea for a series of comedies pairing Douglas MacLean (I) and Doris May, and their first picture, 23 1/2 Hours' Leave (1919), was successful. When William S. Hart's contract ended, however, he left the company and Zukor forced Ince out of Paramount/Artcraft. In December 1919, Thomas Ince, Mack Sennett, Marshall Neilan, Maurice Tourneur and Allan Dwan would join together to form Associated Producers, an independent film alliance. 'Roscoe 'Fatty Arbuckle had been approached, but he had no desire to join the group. In 1922 Associated Producers would merge with First National. On the February 1, 1922, Paramount director William Desmond Taylor was shot to death in his bungalow. One of the suspects, although never a serious one, was Mack Sennett, who stated that he spent the night at the home of Ince. In 1924 Ince was one of several Hollywood people aboard the yacht of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst when he was suddenly rushed off the ship and taken to a hospital, and Hearst spokesmen said he had suddenly taken ill aboard the yacht. Ince was eventually taken to his home, where he died. The morning papers headlined "Movie producer shot on Hearst yacht!" The evening papers would not carry that headline and the rival Hearst paper would print the next day that Ince died of acute indigestion. One of the stories surrounding Ince's sudden and mysterious death--and believed to be the most plausible by many who knew Hearst, Ince and the others aboard the yacht that day--is that the bullet wasn't meant for Ince but for Charles Chaplin, whom Hearst had long suspected of carrying on a secret affair with Hearst's mistress, actress Marion Davies. Supposedly, Hearst inadvertently walked into Davies' cabin and caught her and Chaplin in bed together, pulled out his gun, Chaplin jumped up and ran outside the cabin, Hearst chased him and fired several shots at him, missing Chaplin but hitting Ince, who happened to be standing on deck at the time. As this story goes, columnist Louella Parsons was also on board that day and witnessed the shooting, and in exchange for keeping quiet about it, Hearst promised her a lifetime job as the Hollywood reporter for his newspaper chain (she did, in fact, go to work for the Hearst Corp. shortly after the incident as its entertainment reporter, and remained there for the rest of her life).