Aileen Pringle
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Aileen Pringle (July 23, 1895 – December 16, 1989) was a highly successful and popular stage and film actress during the silent film era. In 1944 she married James M. Cain (as second of his three wives), but the marriage was a tempestuous union and dissolved in a bitter divorce two years later.
Scandal
One small set-back occurred on November 15, 1924 when Aileen Pringle was among a select group of Hollywood elites who boarded a yacht in San Pedro, California called The Oneida owned by newspaper scion and billionaire William Randolph Hearst. The event was to be a birthday party organized by Hearst for film producer and director Thomas Ince.
Other prominent guests aboard The Oneida included columnist Louella Parsons, actor Charlie Chaplin, actress Marion Davies (who was also Hearst's lover) and actresses Seena Owen, Jacqueline Logan and Julanne Johnston.
At dinner that Sunday night, the group enthusiastically celebrated Ince's 42nd birthday. Early Monday morning, Ince was taken from the yacht by water taxi and brought ashore, accompanied by Dr. Goodman a licensed, though non-practicing, physician. By Tuesday night, Thomas Ince was dead.
Although the mysterious death of Thomas Ince was ruled to have been caused by a gastro-intestinal illness, the press frenzy that followed turned the event into a Hollywood legend; with various enigmatic and lurid stories being proffered by gossips. Including an infamous story of Hearst accidentally shooting Ince while aiming for Chaplin, who he believed to be having an affair with Marion Davies. Pringle's career however, weathered the controversy.
