John Ince

Actor/director John Ince was born in 1878 in New York City to a pair of vaudeville performers. His two younger brothers, Ralph Ince and Thomas H. Ince, were also in show business, with Thomas being the most well-known of the three, having been a pioneering producer/director who built the first complete movie studio, containing everything from sound stages to processing labs to standing permanent sets, known as Inceville. Ralph also became an actor/director (many contemporary critics believed him to be a better director than Thomas and a better actor than John), but his reputation off-screen tended to overshadow his on-screen accomplishments. In addition to being an actor, John directed quite a few two-reels for his brother Thomas' studio, in addition to a lesser number of features, and acted in many of his own films. One of his more bizarre productions was Thomas H. Ince, a drama based on a real-life murder, in which the actual murderer, Clara Smith Hamon, played herself! His brother Thomas died in 1924, under somewhat mysterious circumstances (supposedly he was on a party on a yacht owned by wealthy newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst). the story is that Hearst found his mistress, Marion Davies, in bed with actor Charles Chaplin and, enraged, pulled a gun and fired at Chaplin, missing him but hitting and killing Ince. John opened up his own studio. That lasted until 1929, when a confluence of negative factors, including his divorce from his wife, the famous Wall Street stock market crash in which he lost all his money, and a fire that burned down his studio, pretty much killed his career. He managed to get a few supporting roles in modest "B" pictures, but by the mid-'30s his career consisted of one- or two-line speaking roles and uncredited extra work. He had a small part in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) as a guard at Frederic March's bank. He made his final film in 1947, uncredited appearance, and died that year. He appeared posthumously in Gun Cargo (1941), but that film was shot in the late 1930s and not released until 1949.