Stubs - The Cat's Meow

The Cat’s Meow (2002) Starring Kirsten Dunst, Cary Elwes, Edward Herrmann, Eddie Izzard, Joanna Lumley. Directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Screenplay by Steven Peros. Based on a play by Steven Peros. Produced by Kim Bieber, Carol Lewis, Dieter Meyer, Julie Baines. Run time: 112 Minutes. Color. United States, Germany, United Kingdom Mystery, Comedy, Drama, Historical

It almost sounds like a movie, film pioneer Thomas Ince, actress Marion Davies, fellow filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, British writer Elinor Glyn, gossip columnist Louella Parsons, and actress Margaret Livingston take a weekend cruise aboard William Randolph Hearst’s yacht Oneida to celebrate Ince’s birthday. However, the guest of honor dies onboard or soon afterward, depending on who’s story you believe. How did Ince die?

Well, rumors spread quickly that Ince was shot and killed by Hearst in a case of mistaken identity rather than the official story that he died from a heart attack due to his ulcers. And you have to admit, the rumors of a Chaplin – Davies love affair, which appear in other media, and the great power of Hearst make the shooting seem plausible.

The fact that that incident became a movie directed by historian/filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Bogdanovich’s reputation as a film historian lends credence to the accuracy of the story, even though the film admits that no two accounts of the story, from those on board, are the same.

"No director is more steeped in Hearst/Welles/Kane/Hollywood lore than Bogdanovich," wrote film critic Roger Ebert, who heard the Orson Welles version of Thomas Ince's death from Bogdanovich. "It happened that as Bogdanovich told me this story, we were aboard the QE2, crossing to Southampton on the 25th-anniversary voyage of the Telluride Film Festival in 1998. When Bogdanovich returned to New York, there was a script waiting for him. It was an adaptation of Steven Peros' play about the very same scandal. Fate was sending him a message."

The film is narrated, at least in a bookend sort of way, by Elinor Glyn (Joanna Lumley). At the time Glyn, best known for her romantic fiction, had also written for Hearst’s Cosmopolitan magazine amongst other publications.

On November 15, 1924, Elinor arrives early at the San Pedro harbor, where the Oneida is waiting. Elinor doesn’t want to be the first to arrive. The occasion is the birthday of Thomas H. Ince (Cary Elwes) As others arrive, including Charlie Chaplin (Eddie Izzard), Elinor goes onboard. There she is in the company of Ince; actress and Ince’s mistress, Margaret Livingston (Claudia Harrison); Ince’s business partner, Louella Parsons (Meg Tilly), a film critic for Hearst's New York American; actress Marion Davies (Kirsten Dunst); and her host William Randolph Hearst (Edward Hermann), amongst others.

Marion Davies (Kirsten Dunst) is not happy to see Chaplin boarding the yacht.

Several of those on board also find themselves at crossroads in their lives and/or careers. Chaplin was still dealing with the critical and commercial failure of A Woman of Paris (1923) and rumors he had impregnated 16-year-old Lita Grey in the midst of shooting his current film, The Gold Rush (1925). As is his way, Chaplin is thinking about his film, trying to come up with comedic bits to try. Hearst has apparently invited him along so he can watch him.

Davies, who didn’t want Chaplin to come, wants to appear in slapstick comedies rather than the somber costume dramas that Hearst, who controls her career, keeps her in.

Ince's eponymous film studio (Thomas H. Ince Studios) is in dire financial straits and he hopes to convince Hearst to take him on as a partner in Cosmopolitan Pictures and oversee Davies’s career, something Hearst is in charge of.

Margaret Livingston is onboard as Ince’s mistress, hoping that Ince will help her career by talking her up to Hearst.

Parsons, who already works for Hearst, wants to relocate from the East Coast to more glamorous Hollywood, but needs his permission to make the move. She appears to be a somewhat bumbling superfan when around celebrities.

The affair that Davies and Chaplin are supposedly having is well-known or at least suspected by Hearst and by Ince, who sees the two holding hands briefly on deck. Chaplin has a reputation as a lothario, but is in love with Davies. He even tries to write her love letters while onboard, offering her youth as opposed to Hearst, who is 37 years her elder.

Tom Ince (Cary Elwes) watches as Hearst shoots at seagulls with a pistol.

Before dinner, Ince tries to talk to Hearst, desperate to win his favor. He watches as Hearst, pistol in hand walks the deck shooting at seagulls until he manages to kill one for sport. Despite Ince’s best efforts, Hearst is not impressed with the film pioneer and is rather blunt in his assessment comparing him to a cripple.

At dinner that night, Davies has Chaplin sit next to Hearst, trying to keep her distance. Hearst is not amused that Chaplin encourages him to let Davies do comedy. Hearst wants her to be a serious actress, not a comedian.

Chaplin (Eddie Izzard) and Davies dance the Charleston at the first night's party.

There is quite a party on board the ship with a small jazz band playing. When they dance the Charleston, Hearst sits it out, but is keenly aware of Chaplin and Davies. Chaplin, much to Hearst’s chagrin, refers to Davies as the next Tramp, the comedic character he was known for playing.

The party in Davies's room includes liquor, drugs, and Elinor Glyn (Joanna Lumley).

While Heart steers the ship for a few hours, the party intensifies with drinking, drugs, and sex, in Davies's room. Meanwhile, Hearst’s secretary Joseph Willicombe (Ronan Vibert) brings him a news story that will appear in the next day’s paper gossiping about Chaplin and Davies. Hearst does not take the news well.

The next morning, Chaplin and Davies apparently consummate their relationship before breakfast. While Chaplin is not in his room, Ince searches it looking for any clue he can find to use against him and curry favor with Hearst. In the wastebasket, he finds a draft of one of Chaplin’s love letters.

Throughout the day, Ince tries to find a time to give Hearst the letter, but he is too timid to do it.

Chaplin, Ince, and Davies at Ince's birthday party aboard the Oneida.

There is another dinner that night and more celebration for Ince's birthday, though everyone is limited by Hearst to only one glass of champagne.

Ince does finally find the courage to give Hearst the letter, which enrages the old man. Thinking he has finally won favor, Ince goes to Margaret’s cabin for a sexual celebration. However, the actress has gotten tired of being nothing more than his sex toy onboard and refuses his advances.

Charlie tries to convince Davies to leave Hearst for him.

Meanwhile, as Hearst searches the yacht for him, Chaplin has a heart-to-heart with Davies. He wants her to leave Hearst for him and seems to be winning her over. He leaves Davies to think about it and also leaves behind the party hat that he’d been wearing.

Ince makes the mistake of putting on Chaplin's party hat.

Ince finds Davies and tries to get her to admit to her affair with Chaplin. She supposedly tells him that she’s never loved Hearst, something Hearst overhears. Ince puts on the hat Chaplin had been wearing and in a fit of anger, Hearst shoots him in the head, only realizing, when Ince turns, that he has shot the wrong man.

A great cover-up ensues with Willicombe and Dr. Daniel Goodman (James Laurenson) aiding Hearst. They don’t want him to be treated in a hospital, but rather a private doctor whom they can control. It is decided to dock in San Diego and have Ince taken by ambulance to his home in Los Angeles.

Parsons, who had witnessed the murder, is hysterical and Willicombe gives her a sedative. Other guests had heard a commotion, but had not investigated. In the night, however, Margaret does get up and go to Ince’s room wondering where he is.

The next morning, the guests are told that Ince had taken ill and was being taken to be treated. The drivers for the cars for the guests are all Hearst employees, save for Chaplin’s personal driver Toraichi Kono (Yuki Iwamoto), who stares as the head bandaged Ince is carried to the waiting ambulance and tells Chaplin what he saw.

Hearst makes a point of getting the other guests not to speak of what happened, as to keep their own secrets from being made public, as they would if there was ever an investigation of what happened.

Hearst calls Ince’s wife Nell and tells her that not only was Ince being unfaithful to her, but that he was depressed about his business and had tried to take his life in a suicide attempt.

Davies, of course, knows the truth and confides in Chaplin. While they are talking in her cabin, Hearst confronts them. Chaplin does not hold back and berates him, all the while thinking Davies will be leaving with him. It is when Hearst challenges Chaplin to commit to her the way he has that Chaplin falters. When faced with a decision, Davies chooses Hearst’s lifetime commitment to Chaplin’s love for now.

The other guests get something to keep them quiet. Livingston, who is concerned, is told to come to see Hearst at the studio later in the week. We’re told later that her weekly salary would increase from $300 a week to $1000 a week overnight.

According to the movie, Parsons uses her knowledge of events to wrangle from Hearst not only the plumb assignment she wants to write about Hollywood, but also a lifetime contract from Hearst. She would remain a fixture in Hollywood gossip until 1965.

The film ends at Ince’s funeral when Chaplin engages with Davies one last time. He’s off to Mexico to marry Grey.

Charlie Chaplin

Our narrator tells what happens to our cast. Chaplin would finish The Gold Rush and, despite being over budget, make a lot of money at the box office.

 Margaret Livingston

While Margaret Livingston may never have reached stardom, she would appear as The Woman from the City in F.W. Murnau’s silent classic, Sunrise (1927). She would make the transition to sound and even dubbed Louise Brooks’s part in The Canary Murder Case (1929). However, she would later retire from films to manage the career of her husband, bandleader Paul Whiteman.

Marion Davies

Marion Davies’ career, which lasted until 1937, will be forever overshadowed by her love affair with Hearst, which lasted from 1917 until his death in 1951. She would supposedly even have a child by Hearst, Patricia Lake in 1919. Davies got her chance to do comedy in 1927 with Tillie the Toiler, and The Fair Co-Ed. She would also work with King Vidor on Show People (1928), The Patsy (1928), and Not So Dumb (1930). In her 45 feature films, over a 20-year period, Davies had never been anything but the star and, except for uncredited cameo appearances, had always received top billing. She would later be savaged when depicted as Susan Alexander in Citizen Kane (1941) at the hands of Orson Welles and writer Herman J. Mankiewicz.

Elinor Glyn

Our narrator, Glyn, who talks like she is more trapped in Hollywood than loves being there, started her career writing, what was at the time, risqué romantic fiction for women. She started writing for Hearst’s International Magazine Company in 1919 and came to the U.S. to write for the Famous Players-Lasky Production Company.

Her 1927 novel “It” is responsible for the use of the word “it” to mean a characteristic that "...draws all others with magnetic force. With 'IT' you win all men if you are a woman–and all women if you are a man. 'IT' can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.” Being named the “It” girl would help propel Clara Bow’s career. She was also influential in the careers of Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson.

Thomas Ince

Ince’s death would only receive minimal investigation. His body was cremated two days after he died. The only one who was interviewed by police was Dr. Goodman, a Hearst confidante.

According to Ince's widow, Nell, Ince, and Hearst had been negotiating a deal under which Hearst's Cosmopolitan Productions would use Ince's studio. Hearst visited Ince at his home, his "Dias Dorados" estate at 1051 Benedict Canyon Drive, on Saturday, November 15, and invited him for a weekend cruise on his yacht to honor Ince's birthday and to work out details of the Ince/Cosmopolitan deal.

Ince took a train to San Diego, where he joined the guests the next morning. At dinner that Sunday night, the group celebrated his birthday, but later Ince suffered an acute bout of indigestion due to his consumption of salted almonds and champagne, both forbidden as he had peptic ulcers. Accompanied by Dr. Goodman, a licensed though non-practicing physician, Ince traveled by train to Del Mar, where he was taken to a hotel and given medical treatment by a second doctor and a nurse. Ince then summoned his wife and Dr. Ida Cowan Glasgow (Ince's personal physician) to Del Mar with Ince's eldest son William accompanying them. The group traveled by train to his Los Angeles home where Ince died. Nell said that Ince had been treated for chest pains caused by angina, but years later his son William became a physician and said that his father's illness resembled thrombosis.

While stories about his death make for an intriguing mystery, they should not overshadow Ince’s contributions to the Hollywood film industry. Called both the “Creator of the Hollywood Studio system” and the “Father of the Western”, Ince made over 800 films during his career. He would invent the assembly line approach to filmmaking, which allowed for more films to be made simultaneously. Two of his studios’ facilities, Ince-Triangle Studios, and Thomas H. Ince Studios, survive today. The former would become Goldwyn studios before becoming the long home to MGM and later Sony Pictures. The latter would become the home of David O. Selznick and is still in use as The Culver Studios.

True or not, the film is well-acted. Kirsten Dunst, who was all of 19, does more than hold her own in the lead role. While she might not be a dead ringer for Marion Davies, she does manage to capture the public perception of the actress, a fun-loving though kept woman.

William Randolph Hearst never seems to be portrayed well in films. I would have to guess that the depiction is well-deserved. Edward Herrmann seems to capture the suspicious, complicated and privileged image that we have of the newspaper publisher.

Of all the actors playing actors in this film, Eddie Izzard looks the least like Charlie Chaplin, though he does seem to capture the essence of the man at that time in his life. His portrayal presents a man who is really only capable of really loving himself, though he can convince himself that he can love others just as passionately.

Thomas Ince seems to get the shrift in this film, his portrayal by Cary Elwes seems to go beyond desperate filmmaker to present a man who will do anything and ruin anyone in order to get what he wants. Not a favorable depiction by any standards. However, Elwes does seem to do a good job in the role.

The film seems to be based on real events, but is also highly fictionalized as well. No one doubts that Ince died after the boat trip, but it seems that Hearst presents such an easy target that it’s easy to imagine the worst. Reports on Ince’s funeral in the Los Angeles Times, which had briefly headlined the story of his death as ‘Movie Producer Shot on Hearst Yacht!", include that the casket would remain open for one hour "to afford friends and studio employees to pass for one last glimpse of the man they loved and respected", with no witnesses ever mentioning a bullet wound. That seems to fly in the face of what Chaplin’s driver Kono told his wife, that Ince's head was "bleeding from a bullet wound." That story quickly spread among Japanese domestic workers throughout Beverly Hills. Maybe that’s where others heard the story, too.

With any real conspiracy, there seem to have been too many people involved for it to remain a total secret if there had been a murder, but who am I to say if that’s true or not?

I am not here to make a statement about the truth behind Ince’s death, but rather whether or not to recommend The Cat’s Meow. If you’re like me and enjoy early Hollywood history, then this is a film you may want to see. You have to look at the events depicted with a bit of skepticism, but at the same time, there is enough of a possible truth there to keep you interested. If you’re not into Hollywood history, you might find the relationship study a bit slow in places as events lead up to murder, but there is not a lot of action up until that event.