William J. Mann – Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, Hollywood’s First Openly Gay Star
English | Size: 889.18 MB
Category: Film History / Theory

In 1930 William Haines was Hollywood’s #1 box-office draw – a talented, handsome, and wisecracking romantic lead. Off screen, however, protected by a careful collaboration between studio and press, he was openly gay with reporters and studio chiefs alike. Here is Haines’s virtually unknown story – rich with detail, revelations, and scandal – about silent movies and talkies; his lover Jimmie Shields, and their fifty-year relationship (Joan Crawford, their best friend, called them “The happiest married couple in Hollywood”) and the enforcement of the Production Code and establishment of the Hollywood closet, which led to the blacklisting that ultimately doomed Haines’s film career.
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