Threading a non-member function

I don't understand the execution flow of the following code:

main()
{
... 
    while(TRUE)
    {
        string verb = readCommand();

        if (verb == IPC_VERB_CREATE)
        {
            if (NULL == m_pipeline)
            {
                m_pipeline = new Pipeline(argv);
                boost::thread *pipelineThread = new boost::thread(boost::bind(&Pipeline::run, m_pipeline));
            }
        }
        else if (verb == IPC_VERB_PLAY)
        {
            m_pipeline->play();
        }
        else if (verb == IPC_VERB_PAUSE)
        {
            m_pipeline->pause();
        }
    }
...
}

When I execute the IPC_VERB_CREATE, the run() function is not executing. Once I make another call in this loop to play(), the run() function continues and then play() is executed.

I realize that this may be a pretty bad model, but I am just experimenting at this point. At a minimum I would expect run() to execute immediately. Why isn't it running until the second call?