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William Haines was born Charles William Haines in Virginia in 1900. Haines knew he was gay at an early age, and he left home with a young man when he was a teen, and eventually landed in New York City. After a variety of jobs he started acting, and he was signed to a contract by Samuel Goldwyn in 1922. At first his career progressed slowly with mostly minor roles, but in 1926 he was noticed in a supporting role in Brown of Harvard. He was given the lead in his next movie, Lovey Mary, and the public liked this tall athletic actor, and he stayed very busy, playing the romantic lead in 21 movies over the next six years, often playing a soldier or an athlete. In 1930 he was the top male box-office star. But Haines was not only gay (not at all unusual in Hollywood), but he was also openly gay, living with his boyfriend Jimmie Shields, who he had met in 1926. Haines was the only openly gay major star at that time. In 1930 The Production Code came to Hollywood movies, led by Will Hayes, which was an attempt to curb "immorality" in movies. With the support of the Catholic Church, the Code slowly gained power in the early 1930s. In 1933, Haines was arrested in a YMCA with a sailor he had picked up, and Louis B. Mayer (head of MGM and very much afraid of Hays and the Code) gave him an ultimatum to either give up Jimmie Shields and enter into a sham marriage and hide his homosexuality, or be fired. Haines refused, and he was fired, and his career was essentially over. But Haines had many great friends in Hollywood, including Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, Marion Davies and George Cukor, and he started a very successful interior decorating business that lasted for 40 years. His clients over the years included many of his friends, such as Ronald and Nancy Reagan, at the time when Reagan was Governor of California (Haines was an active supporter of the Republican Party). Haines relationship with Jimmie Shields lasted until Haines passed away in 1973 at the age of 73. Shortly after, Shields committed suicide, and they are buried together. Joan Crawford described them as "the happiest married couple in Hollywood"!

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Important Added Info: Note that starting in the very early 1910s (around 1912, when studios realized that people were more likely to go to a movie if it had a star they liked in it), studios created sets of special "personality" posters, which theaters that showed their movies could hang in their lobbies. These had a big advantage over posters for specific movies, because they could be used whenever a movie with that star was shown, which meant they could be used over and over! Because studios realized this, they made these posters on a high quality paper stock, sometimes with a "linen" texture, and sometimes with elaborate border designs, and almost always with great quality color printing. They almost always measured exactly 22" x 28", the same as "half-sheets" (which were then known as "displays", except that they were taller than they were wide, and that the images almost always had a "full bleed", meaning that there were no blank borders. They almost always showed a head and shoulders image of the star, and the image on these posters is often very close to actual life-size! They almost always have the name of the star and the studio they worked for at the bottom. Even though there were many sets of these from many studios over a period of approximately 30 years (they were rarely made after the early 1940s), very few survive, likely partially due to World War II paper drives, and partially due to the fact that they were never folded and the paper they were made of sometimes aged poorly. We at eMoviePoster.com were just consigned a very special collection of 99 of these "personality" posters, which we are auctioning in separate auctions. They were collected starting in the mid 1980s, and the collector who assembled this collection tried to "upgrade" condition whenever possible over the years, so many of them are in excellent condition (sometimes likely the best surviving example), and on the ones where they are in lesser condition, it is because the collector never could find one in better condition! Now he has consigned them to us, and they will find new owners. If they were kept together, they would surely make an incredible display for the walls of any place where lots of people gather, like a museum, a restaurant, or any similar place. Of course, it is more likely that these will find many, many separate new homes, but we hope that they end up publicly displayed wherever they end up!

Note that MGM became a major studio after its creation (through merger) in 1924, and at some point in the 1920s, they created two different sets of personality posters to promote their stars, and in the 1930s, when they had "more stars than there are in Heaven", they created four more sets! You can tell the sets apart in two ways. One is that all of the posters from a set have the same border design and the stars and studio names are written in the same font and layout. The other is that you can look at the age of the star in the image (although that might possibly be deceptive, because they might have sometimes used a slightly younger version of a star!). The MGM sets were likely made every two to three years, and some major stars carried over from set to set, but with the passing years, some stars would be dropped and new stars added. These posters are extremely rare as it is likely few theaters ordered them, and fewer still saved them, and in addition, they could be easily torn, and if they were not stored carefully, they would become fragile, and it is likely many were damaged and discarded for that reason! Note that the high quality paper stock these posters were printed on does not always age very well, and can become fragile (usually resulting in chips around the edges of the poster). Because of their fragile nature and their age, we intend to send all of these personality posters in large flat packages, and never roll them into tubes (unless the buyer insists)! PLEASE DO NOT BID ON THIS POSTER, UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO PAY THE COST OF SHIPPING IT IN A LARGE FLAT PACKAGE!

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