One of the productions in which Hayakawa performed was called The Typhoon. Tsuru Aoki, a member of the acting troupe, was so impressed with Hayakawa's abilities and enthusiasm that she enticed film producer Thomas H. Ince to see the play. Ince saw the production and offered to turn it into a silent film with the original cast. Eager to return to Japan, Hayakawa tried to dissuade Ince by requesting the then-astronomic fee of $500 a week, but Ince agreed to his request. The Typhoon (1914) became an instant hit and was followed by two additional pictures produced by Ince, The Wrath of the Gods (1914) co-starring Hayakawa's new wife, Aoki, and The Sacrifice (1914). With Hayakawa's rising stardom, Jesse L. Lasky soon offered Hayakawa a contract, which he accepted, making him part of Famous Players-Lasky (now Paramount Pictures). Stardom Hayakawa's second film for Famous Players-Lasky was The Cheat (1915), directed by Cecil B. DeMille. The Cheat co-starred Fannie Ward as Hayakawa's love interest and was a huge success, making Hayakawa a romantic idol and sex symbol to the female movie-going public. "It caused a sensation," says Stephen Gong, the executive director of San Francisco's Center for Asian American Media. "The idea of the rape fantasy, forbidden fruit, all those taboos of race and sex—it made him a movie star. And his most rabid fan base was white women." With his popularity and "broodingly handsome" good looks, Hayakawa commanded a salary that reached over $3,500 a week at the height of his fame in 1919. In 1917, he built his residence, a castle-styled mansion, at the corner of Franklin Avenue and Argyle Street in Hollywood, which was a local landmark until it was demolished in 1956. Following The Cheat, Hayakawa became a leading man for romantic dramas in the 1910s and early 1920s. He also began acting in Westerns and action films. He sought for roles, but dissatisfied with being constantly typecast, Hayakawa decided to form his own production company. There is some lack of clarity on how Haworth Pictures Corporation got its original funding. Hayakawa himself gave two different versions. The first was in his autobiography; he tells of William Joseph Connery, a fellow University of Chicago alumnus, introducing him to A.B.C. Dohrmann, the president of a china and glassware company in San Francisco who was willing to pay one million dollars to establish the company. In the second version,