William Haines (January 2, 1900 - December 26, 1973) was a US film actor who was one of the virtually all successful movie star of the silent era.

Born Charles William Haines to the loaded personal around Staunton, Virginia, Haines left home at a age of Fourteen & moved to New York City. Fallowing winning the talent contest he moved to Hollywood where he played bit parts for many years until MGM Studios began casting him in further large roles.

By 1925 he was MGM's most important male star, & his films were super profitable for the studio. He was cultivated as a romanticistic leading human, & his combination of an expert looks & flair for comedy won him numbers of fans.

He appeared around successes like Sally, Irene and Mary (1926 with newcomers Joan Crawford and Constance Bennett), West Point (1927 also by using Crawford), & scored his large individual successes with Light brown of Harvard (1926) & Show People (1928), opposite Marion Davies. Haines was the top-5 pack professional star from either 1928 to 1932 His talking picture include Hollywood Review of 1929, Yours free! & Easily, Upright A Gigolo, The Girl Said There is no, & Way Out West. Haines lived openly as a homosexual man, and from either 1926 swallow Jimmy Shields, whom he had met in the period of the production of a film. Studio publiciser were a cappella to keep this page from either a click, nonetheless studio head Louis B. Mayer pressured Haines to end his relationship with Shields and marry. He mass produced the successful transition into talking pictures (within 1930 he was a top male pack professional star inside Hollywood), however when two or three years his films began to falter at the pack professional. Once Mayer eventually delivered him an ultimatum, & forced him to order between Shields & his career. Haines chose Shields & Mayer terminated his contract, quickly recasting Robert Montgomery (actor) in roles that had been planned for Haines. Haines manufactured two or three minor films at inexpensive studios, so retired.

Haines & Shields began the successful career when interior designers and antique dealers. Among their early clients were friends like Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard, Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst. Their populates were disrupted inside 1936 whilst homophobic neighbours, dressed in sheets & exhausting hoods to hide their faces, dragged the children men from either their page & beat them. Crawford, along sustaining more stars like Claudette Colbert, Kay Francis and Charles Boyer urged the men to report this to the law. Marion Davies asked Hearst to utilise his influence to assure a neighbours were prosecuted full extent of a law, however at long last Haines & Shields chose does'nt to report the incident. A few eventually settled into a Hollywood community within Malibu, and their business prospered until their retirement in the early Seventies, barring the brief interruption whenever Haines was drafted for World War II. A hanker names of clients Haines & Shields worked for involved Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan when Reagan was governor of California.

Haines never returned to films. Gloria Swanson extended him a portable invitation to come out using her in the film Sunset Boulevard (1950) however he refused.

Haines & Shields remained together for the rest of their passes. Joan Crawford (a womb-to-tomb friend) described the babies when "the happiest married couple in Hollywood". Haines died from either lung cancer in Santa Monica, California at the age of 73. Shortly later, Shields, world health organization suffered from either what numbers of guess to become Alzheimer's Disease (and had actually been ill for a longer period of time than Haines) put on Haines' pajamas, took an overdose of pills, and crawled into their bed to die. It were inhumed side by side in the Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery.

William Haines has the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to Motion Pictures, at 7012 Hollywood Boulevard. His life was detailed around William J Mann's critically acclaimed 1998 biography, ''Wisecracker: The Life & Days of William Haines, Hollywood's 1st Openly Gay Star''.