He was born in Virginia in 1900 to a cigar-maker and his wife. His dad was one of those manly men who encouraged his son to engage in sports, telling him that it was foolish to waste his natural athleticism. But from as long as he could remember Billy was a mama's boy. He dearly loved his mother and though he had four younger siblings, he was clearly her favorite and hung on her every word. His dad was concerned that his eldest son spent too much time decorating and redecorating his bedroom. Mother and son both loved movies and spent as much time as they could watching the silents.
Around the age of 14 Billy acquired his first boyfriend and by 15 left home and went off with him to a claptrap of a decadent little Virginia town called Hopewell. It reeked of thieves, dopers and hookers and the boys thought they'd died and gone to heaven. While they had regular, unexciting jobs, and despite their youth, they opened a dance hall which had back rooms for boys like them to indulge in secretive things. Awhile later he returned to his childhood home because his father had a nervous breakdown due to bankruptcy. As things improved some at home, Billy left again, this time for his dream destination, New York City.
Actually... make that Greenwich Village. It was full of hustlers, drag queens, chorus boys and wannabes of every stripe and color. Haines loved life there. His good looks attracted the attention of both a modeling agency and an older patroness for whom he became a kept boy. He was making good money and acquiring a reputation for his impeccable good taste.
There was a piss-elegant air about him. He was consumed with antiques and decorating and the theater and sex. He was a man about town, always with the quick witticism and dressing as though he was about to have an audience with European royalty. He palled around with the likes of Cary Grant, designer Orry-Kelly, director George Cukor and when visiting from England, Noel Coward. All were freshly-minted in their quests for acclaim but they were ahead of Billy, which he hoped to change soon.
And then good fortune came calling. It happened as simply as being discovered while walking down the street. A Hollywood agent took one look at him, noticed his striking appearance and hoped he would want to take her up on her offer to be in the movies. California, here he comes. Was it ready?
Hired on at MGM, Mayer disliked him at first sight. It's likely Billy thought little of his boss either, given the usual rancor going on between them most of the time. He had less-than-memorable parts in less-than-memorable pictures for several years. What appealed to him more than anything was Hollywood and its propensity for living on the edge. His new crowd included Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Navarro, Greta Garbo, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich and others who danced out on that edge. It was the 1920s and Hollywood attracted those who wanted to live the high life. Gay was rampant, of course, but few were as obvious as Billy Haines.
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| Billy (l) and Jimmie |
In 1926 he was visiting Manhattan and what should happen but another fortuitous event on the city's streets. He met Jimmie Shields, who would become the love of his life. Shields would quickly move to California and in with Billy and they would remain together until Billy's death in 1973.
In his first years in Hollywood he was as comfortable in his personal life as he was nervous in his acting life. It would take him a few years to adjust to performing before the cameras. The first time he attracted much attention was in 1925's Sally, Irene and Mary, one of the first of those three-girls-looking-for-husbands stories. He became lifelong friends with Irene, Joan Crawford, herself just starting out in the movies. They stood by one another through thick and thin and each would be there for the other when it was needed. Later in their friendship, he would say she was a better friend than she was a mother. Oh?
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| With his BFF, Joan Crawford |
The next year he made his most prominent film to date, the comedy Brown of Harvard. His dad must have been proud. Billy played a jock. His character became his stock in trade... an impossibly conceited jerk who fouls up time and again but discovers the error of his ways at the end. Whatever he had, the public lapped it up.
On and off the screen, he was known as a wisecracker. It had a dual meaning. For the most part, it meant being a smartass. His roles portrayed him as he was in real life... always delivering zingers, quick, running circles around others, putting his adversaries on the defensive. But wisecracker was also a code word for gay. Hollywood, San Francisco and New York were certainly clued in to this wisecracker, but most of America tuned in late to the gay side of the ledger.
Also in 1926 he joined Lon Chaney for the very butch, Go Tell It to the Marines. This is one of those Haines films where I have seen a clip and it's astonishing how effeminate he was. Hollywood had certainly never known a star so gay... and it was years before they would find another one.
In 1928 he made Show People with Marion Davies. She was a better actress than she was given credit for but she was given much more credit for being the longtime paramour of newspaper magnate, William R. Hearst, and the mistress of his grand Hearst Castle at San Simeon. Davies and Billy became fast friends and life for him and Jimmie at the castle left them in ecstacy.
By 1930 Billy Haines was the top male star in Hollywood. Though he brought lots of Depression coins to MGM, Mayer still disliked him. Around this time Billy was arrested on a morals charge which Mayer was reluctant to handle for him, although someone at the studio did. He pressed Billy to marry as lots of bachelor actors did at the time. Billy refused. He also refused to tone it all down. You have no sex appeal, Mayer growled. You are so wrong, Billy spat. Before I came out here I was kept by the best men and women in New York City. I appeal to both sexes. He hated Mayer's condescending, moral, homophobic attitude although he seemed to disregard he was the boss.
By the early thirties, conservatism had crept into Tinseltown. Congress called Hollywood indecent. The excesses of Hollywood were tiresome to many who didn't live there. Censorship was loudly demanded. William Hays headed a board to bring about censorship and to rid Hollywood of homosexuals and many were hounded. So-called mental health experts made it loud and clear that homosexuality was a disease. L. B. Mayer was nervous.
Billy paid little mind to most of it and countered by buying an expensive house, filling it with stunning antiques and inviting all of Hollywood to a gala. He wanted to show that nothing had changed, which, of course, it had. The wild days of the 1920s for a lot of people had come to an end. Billy didn't get the memo. He didn't apparently notice that the old days of gay or at least fey stars had come to a screeching halt. With the 30s came more manly men, more dangerous ones... Clark Gable, Paul Muni, James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson.
Either Billy made the most costly decision of his career in 1930 or Mayer ordered him into Way Out West, a dreadful flop of a film in which Billy was more girlish than ever. In the film his character is even called a pansy. Movie magazines began referring to him as femme, some claiming that he was the housewife at home. (Gulp! Jimmie was butch, so....) Mayer saw to it that from now on Billy would be doing less desirable films, often in subordinate roles.
After another arrest and a studio cover-up, Mayer called his least-favorite employee into his mile-long office for a little heart-to-heart. It's doubtful that Mayer put his arm around Billy as he usually did when he was meting out punishment to his horde of employees. Mayer told him in no uncertain terms that he was to shape up and fly right and most importantly he was to give up living with Jimmie or he was fired.
Billy, it seems, no longer cared much about his career and he likely saw the end coming anyway. He had no intention of being someone he wasn't. He had no intention of going on studio-arranged dates or taking part in idiotic photo sessions. He had no intention of marrying, even one of his lesbian actress friends. He certainly had no intention of leaving Jimmie. His response to Mayer is the stuff of Hollywood lore... I'll be glad to give up Jimmie as long as you give up your wife. Billy Haines never made another movie.
His transition from movie star to interior decorator was one of his easiest moves. He'd been decorating for years while making films. His idea was that the interior of beautiful homes should be lushly decorated like sets from the movies. Let's face it, nobody did that better that MGM. He had already redecorated Crawford's home in that manner and his good pal Carole Lombard's as well. He and Cranberry (that's what he called Crawford) discussed his talents, imagination and the very clear fact that he knew a lot of wealthy people who would want his services. Cranberry would see to it. She was a cheerleader for him on all fronts. Some of his earliest clients were Colbert, Tallulah Bankhead, William Powell and Fredric March.
One of the best things, of course, was the change in professions came with a change of attitude about his gayness. As an interior decorator, it not only didn't matter but was likely expected and he was trusted to know what he was talking about.
Things took a downward turn in 1936 when he was arrested for soliciting a minor while walking his dog on the sand at Manhattan Beach, where he and Jimmie rented a cottage for a few summers. Billy always said it wasn't true and so did the boy. It was the father who brought the charges, which were ultimately dropped but not before both he and Jimmie were beaten unmercifully by the father and his cronies. It's been said their real beef was noticing the parade of handsome men in and out of the cottage.
Billy moved into the custom furniture business and continued decorating as well. That business is still thriving in Los Angeles and New York and a couple of other American cities to this day.
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| From left, Jimmie, Billy, Crawford, her husband Alfred Steele |
In later years, Billy (strangely, a Republican) decorated the homes of the Reagans and his pack of conservative groomers, including the Alfred Bloomingdales and the Walter Annenbergs. When the latter became ambassador to Great Britain, Billy was commissioned to redecorate the ambassador's new residence, a heady assignment.
It would take something like that to put Billy Haines back in the news. One rarely heard about him although I often did because I faithfully read The Hollywood Reporter for years and occasionally his name would show up there when he decorated someone's home or threw a glittering party. He would also appear in someone's biography and of course in everything on gay Hollywood history.
When he and Jimmie had been together for 30 years (eventually it would be 47), he sent Mayer a note, advising him it had been 30 years and adding and they say these things don't last. Ah, ever the wisecracker.
A year into his retirement, Billy Haines was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. In December of 1973 he checked himself into a Santa Monica hospital where he died the day after Christmas with Jimmie holding his hand. Three months later Jimmie took his own life. He left a note... Goodbye to all of you who have tried so hard to comfort me in my loss of William Haines, whom I have been with since 1926. I now find it impossible to go it alone. I am much too lonely.
He is a forgotten movie star but oddly enough when I started to outline what I wanted to do here for the 1930s, Billy Haines is the first person I thought of.
Next posting:
Remakes
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