- Born
- Died
- Birth nameCharles William Haines
- Nicknames
- Billy
- Willy
- Height6′ (1.83 m)
- Born in Staunton, Virginia, William Haines ran off to live life on his own terms while still in his teens, moving to New York City and becoming friends with such later Hollywood luminaries as designer Orry-Kelly and Cary Grant. His film career started slowly, but by the end of the silent era he was regularly named as the #1 male box-office draw. He also became fast friends with a number of contemporaries, such as Joan Crawford and Marion Davies, whose fame would eclipse his. His career faded rapidly in the early 1930s, and he was finally released allegedly due to a fight with MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer over Haines' refusal to end his relationship with his lover, Jimmie Shields. However, as his film career ended, his interior design career blossomed, resulting in major work for Jack L. Warner and the Bloomingdales, and culminating in the refurbishing of the American ambassador's residence in London, England. Although Haines was quite open about his homosexuality and entertained many of Hollywood's gay set - including George Cukor and Clifton Webb - his story is missing from many histories of the era. Haines and Shields remained a couple for 50 years; Crawford called them "the happiest married couple in Hollywood."- IMDb mini biography by: Tony Adam <anthony-adam@tamu.edu>
- One of the first of the wisecracking male leads
- In 1930 he was the top box-office male star and Joan Crawford the top female.
- Following the Great Depression and a tight crackdown on morality, MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer insisted Haines leave his lover and publicly marry a woman. He refused and was fired. His relationship with longtime lover Jimmie Shields lasted 50 years.
- Under pressure to marry, he proposed to friend and frequent co-star Anita Page during the making of Are You Listening? (1932). She turned him down, and the two remained friends for a long time after.
- Was approached, along with fellow silent-screen veterans Buster Keaton and Anna Q. Nilsson, to play one of Gloria Swanson's bridge partners in Sunset Boulevard (1950). Swanson herself reportedly asked him to do it. Haines declined and fellow screen veteran H.B. Warner took the part.
- Almost three months after his death, his lifelong partner Jimmie Shields, broken-hearted, committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills.
- [on his interior-decorating career of almost four decades] I like what I'm doing now. It's clean. No makeup on the face.
- Joan Crawford thought we should get married. This was back in the 1920s, when I was a star and she was a rising flapper. It wasn't just a crass question of her ambition; we were very good but platonic friends. I told her, "Cranberry"--my pet name for her--"that isn't how it works in Hollywood. They usually pair men who like men and ladies who like ladies". Because if we both liked men, where would we be as man and wife? She'd resent me, and that would be the end of our beautiful friendship.
- I went to the beach house of a famous leading lady of the 1930s, which she wanted redecorated if it didn't cost too much. The only sculptures she had were of herself, so I asked her if she liked painting. She said she preferred wallpaper--flocked yet! And I found out that she ordered books by the yard. The woman was virtually illiterate!
- [on the coming of sound to MGM] It was the night of the Titanic all over again, with women grabbing the wrong children and Louis B. Mayer singing "Nearer My God to Thee".
- [on his friend, Joan Crawford] Until Joan discovered she could cover her furniture in plastic, there were entire apartments in Los Angeles that had been furnished with almost-new sofas and chairs that had been soiled once, then discarded.
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