Change of Pace

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On Sunday night, my partner and I caught TCM's "Silent Sunday" showing of the 1928 film "West Point," starring the all-but-forgotten William Haines. But it's Haines' own story that should be turned into a movie. As Wikipedia recounts, by 1925 he was MGM's most important male star. But...

Haines lived openly as a homosexual. Starting in 1926, Haines lived with Jimmy Shields, whom he had met when Shields was his stand-in during the production of a film. Studio publicists were able to keep Haines' sexual orientation from the press....

In 1933...Louis B. Mayer, the studio head at MGM, delivered an ultimatum to Haines: choose between a sham marriage or … [end] his relationship with Shields. Haines chose Shields and they were ultimately together for 50 years. Mayer subsequently fired Haines and terminated his contract.

And there's much more:

Haines and Shields began a successful career as interior designers and antique dealers....Their lives were disrupted in 1936 when members of the Ku Klux Klan dragged the two men from their home and beat them, because a neighbor had accused the two of propositioning his son. Crawford, along with other stars such as Claudette Colbert, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Kay Francis and Charles Boyer urged the men to report this to the police. Marion Davies asked her lover William Randolph Hearst to use his influence to ensure the neighbors were prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but ultimately Haines and Shields chose not to report the incident.

The couple finally settled into the Hollywood community in Malibu, and their business prospered until their retirement in the early 1970s, except for a brief interruption when Haines served in World War II.

During his film career, Haines may have made it a point to interject gay asides into his material. In "West Point," for no reason in particular he refers to his (platonic) pal as his "boy-friend." One of his films bore the title "Brothers Under the Skin" (in which a shipping clerk and the vice president of the same company "have similar marital problems").

Oh, and as the Internet Movie Database notes, "He was an active supporter of the Republican Party and a close friend of Ronald Reagan."

11 Comments for “Change of Pace”

  1. posted by Bobby on

    Did they really proposition someone’s son? How old was the son? God, I hope these two gay heroes didn’t act like a bunch of perverts. Seriously, you never proposition straight people unless you meet them at a gay bar. Yuck!

  2. posted by Hank on

    Fascinating article, Mr. Miller. Always nice to pick up nuggets of gay history.

  3. posted by ETJB on

    The last point — his politics — does seem bizaree. Many people in Hollywood were no doubt (on some level) ‘friends’ with Reagan.

    Yet, the major parties more or less ignored gay rights — nationally — until the 1980s.

  4. posted by Bobby on

    ETJB, you forget that Reagan was a democrat who marched with Martin Luther King jr. It was later on that he became a republican.

  5. posted by RIchard on

    I doubt very much that Ronald Reagan marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

    True, Reagan became a Republican later in his life. But I had always heard that he was rather reactionary on social issues.

  6. posted by chandler in lasvegas on

    An acquaintance of mine, the very funny Jason Stuart, has/d optioned the biography of Haines titled Wisecracker. HBO backed out of the production from what I am told. Too bad, it is a story needing to be told.

  7. posted by Marc on

    “Did they really proposition someone’s son?”

    Probably not. No one knows what goes in straight people’s minds, specially in those years. I remember reading a case about an Italian gay journalist who killed himself due to ill-treatment received from neighbors who spread rumors that he sexually molested his adopted daughter. There was no indication he did such a thing, aside from his neighbors’ mean-spirited imaginations.

  8. posted by Marc on

    There’s a little on the incident here:

    http://books.google.com/books?id=dXImI8s3ZLMC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=%22William+Haines%22+Ku+Klux+Klan&source=web&ots=jw29b_kFHN&sig=G_tqOrXSlK77L-ptATcwhkokLOc

    The boys’ parents later dropped the charges: http://www.knittingcircle.org.uk/williamhaines.html

  9. posted by Bobby on

    You have a point, Marc. I guess I’m suspicious because sometimes gays do bad things, like Walt Whitman, rumor is that he got ran out of town for some improper relations he had with students.

  10. posted by Marc on

    Yeah, I don’t disagree with you, Bob, but straight people don’t fall short when it comes to propensity to form improper relationships either. Just to mention mid-1900’s big celebrities such as Haines, both Roman Polanski and Elvis Presley dated very young females, and Chaplin was also rumored to have a fetish for teenage girls.

  11. posted by Jeff on

    Mr. Miller-

    I wound up here by total coincidence or just gay luck. I’m wondering why you gave no mention to Mr. Haines (and Mr. Sheilds’) next career of interior design. Visit http://www.williamhaines.com for more history and design. Mr Haines was a revolutionary designer to the stars from back in the day with Joan Crawford to the California years of Ron and Nancy Reagan. (It may make the politics a bit more understandable.) Mr. Haines’ design work is revered by many desiners today and his furniture designs still being featured in magazines today. Just thought you all might want to know.

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