John Ince

Short Biography

John, born in 1878, was considerably less well regarded than Thomas the genius and Ralph the hellraiser. He directed a number of two-reelers for Thomas’s studio, and a dozen or so longer melodramas with titles such as, Should a Woman Tell?, few of which attracted much comment at the time and none of which appear to have survived. He starred in a good deal of his own films, and in many other people’s. His most noteworthy leading role was in Fate (1921), a film about a sensational real-life murder in which the real-life murderer, Clara Smith, played herself:In the publicity material, Clara Smith praised John’s acting, saying, “Mr Ince so strikingly resembles Mr Hamon and is so realistic that I have many times been on the verge of fainting as the dreadful events were re-enacted.” Nevertheless, the film bombed.After Thomas Ince died, John opened a studio of his own. He had produced only a handful of films by 1929, the year his wife divorced him, his studio burned down and he lost all his money in the Wall street crash. That raft of tragedies put John in an even more disadvantageous position than the other stars of twenties who were beginning to struggle with the rise of sound cinema and made it almost impossible that his career would survive. Sure enough, it didn’t. John began the thirties with modest supporting roles in talkies starring actors whose fortunes were waning a little less quickly than his, like John Barrymore, Tom Mix and Bebe Daniels. Within a few years, he was reduced to one-line roles like this doting father bidding his son farewell in One Year Later (1933):Typical of his appearances in the period of his decline is this brief turn as a doctor in a scene in Star of Midnight (1935), in which he quickly treats William Powell for a bullet wound. He says only, "I don't think the hip should trouble you again" before leaving the scene:In You Can't Take it With You (1938), filmed the year Ralph died and John became the last living Ince brother, he appears in a crowd of Lionel Barrymore's neighbours (he's second from the left):By the forties, John was reduced to appearing in uncredited roles in B-movies like The Panther's Claw (1942):His final appearance was in Gun Cargo (1949), which is described by one commenter on the IMDB as "an unwitting, dimwitted masterpiece of rank filmmaking, a shocking assault on the senses, and one of the most godawful adventure dramas ever committed to celluloid". John can take none of the blame for the film. He appeared in footage shot a decade earlier and, in any case, had been dead for two years by the time it was released. He died in 1947, at the age of sixty-eight.