Alexander Ince was a magazine publisher and producer. He was elected to The Lambs in 1940 as a Professional member.
Born in Hungary, he was the European producer of American theater hits that toured Europe, such as Abie’s Irish Rose and Strictly Dishonorable.
He said, “I’m like the artist who has two palettes. After messing up one, he always goes back to the other.” He discovered the theater as a boy in Budapest, too poor to buy a ticket. He’d wait until the first act intermission, mingle with the crowd in the lobby, and then enter the theater. Years later, a fellow Hungarian, the playwright Ferenc Molnár, allowed Ince to read the script of his newest play. Ince suggested revisions in the first act. “You know nothing about such things, Molnár told him. “You’ve never seen a first act.”
Ince also produced the first movies in Hungary in the 1920s, and went on to write and produce more than 50 films. He launched a magazine, Theatrical Life, which became the largest circulating film magazine in Central Europe. As World War II began, he and his family fled Budapest in 1938 and moved to New York. He settled into a colony of Hungarian expatriates, playwright, composers, and producers.
In 1940 he put his thirty years’ experience into publishing a new magazine, Stage (not to be confused with the U.K. publication, The Stage). It had color photos on the cover of actors and actresses, and had news of Broadway, radio, movies, early TV, and opera. In 1948 he merged it with Theatre Arts magazine, which was published until 1956. He later dabbled in producing.
For several years, he taught at the Yale Drama School. The Theater Guild’s Joel Schencker said he had a dispute with Ince once. He refused to accept his statement that Russians hated Americans. The next morning, Ince telephoned him, and said that he had to meet him at a new cafeteria on Broadway and 44th St. Schenker met him there. Ince led him to the cafeteria water spigot and said, “press it.” He did, and the spigot produced seltzer water. “See?” Ince said, holding up his glass of seltzer. “That’s why Stalin hates us.”
Alexander Ince died January 26, 1966, in St. Clare’s Hospital, Manhattan. Ince, who always made a great secret of his age, was believed to have been in his late 70’s. The Lambs and his friends held a memorial service for him at Henry Miller‘s Theatre. He was called the last of a unique breed.
—Researched and written by Shepherd Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, 2025.