‍Hearst with his mistress, star Marion Davies

‍IN NOVEMBER 1924 the world’s richest newspaper mogul, William Hearst threw an A List weekend party that included Charlie Chaplin and the father of the Hollywood Westerns Thomas Ince aboard his luxury 200ft yacht the Oneida moored in San Diego … and created a mystery unsolved to this day.

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‍In a story riddled with sex, jealousy and cover-ups, the night ended in Hearst shooting Ince dead with a bullet meant for Chaplin, it was alleged.

‍For Hearst was eaten up with jealousy that the legendary funny man with a walking stick and bowler hat from London, was rumoured to be sleeping with his mistress, film star Marion Davies.

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‍And so began a massive cover-up by Hearst, one of the most powerful men in America, some historians claim. Within hours of the shooting, the Los Angeles Times ran the headline “Movie Producer Shot on Hearst Yacht.”

‍But that night it was swiftly pulled, and later editions carried no mention of the shooting. Ince was quickly cremated a few days later.

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‍The official version of the death which Hearst printed in his newspapers was that Ince had developed digestive problems which proved fatal despite his swift hospitalisation.

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‍But a male secretary aboard the yacht was quoted in opposition newspapers saying that he had seen Ince bleeding from a bullet wound to the head. Ince’s wife was unavailable for comment as she went on a sudden tour of Europe just two days after the shooting.

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‍Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies was a golden-haired chorus girl with a stammer … and a drink problem. Her first acting appearance was in the musical Chin-Chin when she was 17, But it was two years later, while dancing in the Ziegfeld Follies at 42nd Street’s New Amsterdam Theatre, her life changed.

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‍Billionaire Hearst, aged 53, owner of the influential New York American and New York Evening Journal and 40 other newspapers, was married to former showgirl Millicent Willson when he went to see the Follies in 1916 with a publishing friend who was having a fling with Davies.

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‍But the Davies relationship was winding down and so Hearst stepped in, becoming obsessed with the beautiful 5ft 5in tall, 19-year-old with sparkling blue eyes. They began to be seen together at upmarket restaurant Delmonico’s and later she stayed at Hearst’s hideaway love pad. He bought her a beautiful and hugely expensive gold watch from Tiffany’s and when she lost it, he replaced it with another.

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‍Marion’s career took off partly thanks to coverage in Hearst’s papers and she became one of the biggest stars of the silent screen. As time went on the tycoon moved her and her family into a 25-room townhouse in New York’s fashionable Riverside Drive. It was conveniently near the 86th Street mansion he shared with his wife and five sons.

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‍Hearst, 6ft 3in tall, was known to be ruthless, hot-tempered, and, occasionally, downright nasty and the inspiration for Orson Welles’s masterpiece, Citizen Kane. When he heard rumours that Chaplin was having an affair with his mistress, he exploded with anger.

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‍On the night of November 16, he threw a party to celebrate the 42nd birthday of Western movie mastermind Ince and invited Chaplin, whom he knew lusted over under-age girl starlets, as a guest.

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‍The Times of London claimed that child star Lita Grey was 15 when the silent screen funny man got her pregnant.

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‍Filled with jealousy, Hearst searched the ship in the early hours for Chaplin, The Vintage News later reported, “he believed he had found him in the darkness and fired his gun but sadly the man he shot turned out to be Ince.”

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‍Ince was seen being hurried away in a water taxi, bleeding from the head. The event became the stuff of Hollywood legend, even to this day.

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‍Hearst’s own granddaughter, Patricia “Patty” Hearst, co-authored a fictionalised conspiracy novel on it called Murder at San Simeon, the site of Hearst’s legendary castle where Marion ruled the roost.

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‍Marion’s Hollywood home, paid for by Hearst, was the centre of lavish dinners and rivers of illicit booze served to hundreds of guests including John Barrymore, Rudolph Valentino and Charlie Chaplin. Some say it was there that they had an affair that broke Hearst’s heart.

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‍When he died in 1951, Hearst left behind a fortune estimated to be worth around $2 billion today, even though his empire suffered in the Great Depression. Film star Marion died of cancer of the stomach in 1961, leaving $20 million. She left half of her estate to her niece, Patricia Lake, who was later revealed to be her and Hearst’s daughter.

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‍SAVED! THE BAKER WHO TURNED TO

‍THE BOTTLE AS THE TITANC SANK

‍Charles, saved by whisky

‍DID YOU KNOW?

‍The Press reported how Charles Joughin, Chief Baker of the Titanic led his cooks carrying 50 loaves of bread to the lifeboats as his ship began to sink beneath the icy waters of the Atlantic on the fateful night of April 14, 1912. 

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‍Then, as the water streamed into the ship and people panicked, he calmly went to his cabin and sat drinking a bottle of Scotch until he was drunk.

‍With chaos all around him, he staggered back on deck and threw deckchairs overboard for people to cling to, then jumped in. He swam and floated in the icy sea for over three hours but never felt the cold as other people died in the waves around him. 

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‍He refused to get into the overcrowded lifeboats with the women and children and stayed in the freezing water until the rescue ship came, and he was plucked out, still three sheets to the Arctic wind. Doctors said the whisky saved him from hypothermia, even though medical books don’t.

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‍GLUE POTS AND ASH TRAYS FOR THE STICKY TIMES OF SUBS 143 YEARS AGO

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‍I have just come across a wonderful piece written by the editor of Cassell’s Family Magazine, Henry Hunt in 1882, headlined: A NEWSPAPER SUB-EDITOR’S OFFICE AND WORK.

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‍The Victorian illustrated monthly magazine for families featured fiction, poetry, fashion advice, child-rearing tips, travel articles, and discoveries. But in one issue, two pages (about 3,000 words) were given over to the role of the sub-editor. Here’s why. 

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‍The editor explains 143 years ago: “The public does not understand the work or office of the sub-editor of a daily newspaper. So let me furnish you with a little detail of his job and surroundings taken from one of our provincial dailies.

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‍“The scene is a small room, well-lit and warm with a tendency to grow hot as the hours go on and close in the small hours of the morning. Its furniture for each sub-editor is a table, desk, files of newspapers and a little library with books that are not books but works of reference, dictionaries and the like of world events.

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‍“There are spouts for little boxes, stuffed with copy to travel to the printing room and speaking tubes for voice contact with the printer. Desks are covered with an abundance of tools for the sub-editor … scissors, bottles of gum, little brushes for glue, baskets that overflow with over 100 buff telegraphic envelopes containing stories to open; an abundance of letters from the public and correspondents … and the essential ash tray.” (Sounds like a boring life trapped in a sweaty cell, so far).

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‍Hunt goes on: “During his shift in the dim gas light, the trays are continually topped up with market reports, especially the coal market and parliamentary despatches.

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‍“As the evening moves on, before him hour after hour, by wind or steam; on horseback or in the pouch of an Indian runner or clicking over the magnetic wires, troop all the joys, sorrows, wrongs, triumphs, hopes and despairs of men and women in all four quarters of the globe.”

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‍The editor’s piece goes on about the mechanics of cutting and rewriting stories to fit the space, changing ad shapes and breaking news such as rail crashes, colliery explosions, murders and things like that.

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‍It also reveals the need for the sub-editor to read all his page proofs, and even look for ideas for leader articles, perhaps even killing one story found not to be true and replacing it with two others cut to fit. He ends with this wonderful colourful summary.

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‍“At last, when the work shows signs of exhaustion and the sub’s pencil is blunt; when the desk is littered with scraps of cuttings and curly bits of stale sandwiches and stained tea cups; when the gum is caked around the mouth of the bottle; the scissors won’t cut properly any more; the ash trays are full and the man is hoarse with shouting through speaking tubes and sick of the little imp who is his boy messenger, the work of the tired sub-editor is wound up, seldom satisfactorily to him.

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‍“His night’s work is done … and after all that it may just pass on as use of wrappage for a bar of soap!”

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‍Will the last person to leave the room put out the lights.

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‍THE UNDERTAKER WHO SAVED STAR

‍FREDDIE FROM A PAUPER’S GRAVE

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‍DID YOU KNOW? That comedian Freddie Starr, who made millions of pounds in his lifetime, was to be buried in a pauper’s grave with other penniless unfortunates in Spain, after he died broken and broke aged 76, of a heart attack, in his one-bedroom apartment on the Costa del Sol in 2019.

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‍But an English funeral director, Sheffield-based Michael Fogg, who never met him, stepped in and paid all the costs of his repatriation and funeral, asking nothing from Starr’s family.

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‍He said: “Anyone who can make a funeral director laugh must be a bloody good comedian. And Freddie Starr could make me laugh.”

‍(Good on yer, Michael).

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‍WATCH OUT! THE MAD SLASHER’S ABOUT

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‍… AND DID YOU KNOW? You probably did, that when Scottish engineer John Logie Baird went to the offices of the Daily Express to promote his TV invention early in 1926, the news editor told his secretary: “There’s a lunatic in reception who says he’s got a machine for seeing by wireless. Watch out, he may have a razor on him!”

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‍TERRY MANNERS

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‍22 September 2025

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