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Ronald and Nancy Reagan were frequent guests at his house. His social standing was decidedly A-list. His Hollywood clients included prominent figures of the film community such as Joan Crawford, Claudette Colbert, Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Carole Lombard, William Powell, Frank Sinatra, Lionel Barrymore, Marion Davies, Douglas Fairbanks, studio head Jack Warner and director George Cukor.
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Billy's life-long adage was, "One could be forgiven for illiteracy, but never for lack of good taste." He never worked in films after 1934, but pursued a stupendously successful career as an interior designer, which made him a multi-millionaire.
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Haines refused to lie about his personal life, and Mayer did not renew his contract. Mayer gave Haines an ultimatum: deny his homosexuality by engaging in a sham marriage or be shown the door. However, gossip about his openly gay life threatened his leading man image, and MGM studio head Louis B. Haines with co-star Joan Crawford in West Point (1928): William Haines appeared in over fifty films, was the first MGM star to speak on film, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, just a few feet from the entrance to the Roosevelt Hotel, where the Academy Awards were first presented in 1929. His closest friend was Joan Crawford, much less well-known at the time. Haines was named the leading male film star for 1930.
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A screen test followed, and he packed up and moved to Hollywood, where he became one of the leading silent film stars of the 1920s and 1930s.
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He sent in his photograph to the "New Faces of 1922" contest sponsored by movie producer Samuel Goldwyn – and won. Restless and opportunistic, Haines found work as a model. He lived in an apartment in Greenwich Village for two years, becoming friends with Archie Leach (later known as Cary Grant), who was then in a gay relationship with costume designer Orry-Kelly. At 19 he returned to NYC, where an elderly gentleman arranged a job for Billy at a brokerage firm. A tall, exceedingly handsome young man, Haines soon returned to Virginia to help support his family his mother was pregnant, and his bankrupt father was in a mental institution following a breakdown. Rather than go back to Staunton, he struck out for New York City, where he took a factory job at age 16. Haines was the grandson of one of Staunton's most prominent citizens, but at age 14 (!) he ran away from home with his boyfriend and opened a dance hall in Hopewell, VA, a city so known for wickedness and lawlessness that it was called "Sin City." His place of business, like everything else in the town, was burned to the ground in a great fire in 1915. Astonishingly, he reached the pinnacle of success in successive careers for which he had no training. He lived by his wits, always seeming to make the right moves. Haines, an exceptionally bright and talented young man, recognized opportunity when it was thrust in front of him, and he took advantage of it. Surprisingly, he had not longed to be a movie star, nor did he dream about being a decorator. While he never left the glamorous world of Hollywood, he never again stood before a camera. He switched careers, becoming fabulously wealthy as an interior designer to the stars. While Cary Grant and Randolph Scott and their like tried to put one over on the public, Haines chose an honest life and did one better for himself. Out of those men, only Haines had the courage to defy the studios the others chose to enter into sham, studio concocted relationships or marriages to cover up their sexual orientation. Haines, Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Farley Granger and others were all told that their movie careers would be over if they came out of the closet. He chose dignity and respect for his lover over hypocrisy and ill-gotten fame. He has my never-ending admiration, because he stood up to movie studio heads, refusing to "pretend" to be straight for the sake of the publicity machines. Although it is still possible to stand in awe before the house he was born in, the small city of Staunton doesn't make a fuss over its famous citizen, likely because so few people are still alive who remember his meteoric rise to Hollywood stardom. William “Billy” Haines was born the evening of January 1, 1900, in Staunton, a railroad town in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia (my home state!).