William Haines — The Wisecracker Reveals Himself (1929) 🇺🇸
Last month Bill Haines told of his childhood and his adventurous boyhood. He was born in Staunton, Virginia. There were five children in the family: three boys and two girls. Bill was the oldest.
As told to Marquis Busby
Bill startled the family by running away from home. He worked for a time in a powder factory on the James River. Then he ran a dance hall for a brief period — until fire wiped it out.
Meandering to New York, Haines worked in a department store and with a bond house. Then he was selected as one of the two winners in a contest conducted by the Goldwyn Company. Eleanor Boardman was the other winner.
The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce doesn’t exactly send bands to the train to meet contest winners. They’re as common as coal miners in Pennsylvania. I was lonely and poor in a strange, confusing business. But I made up my mind that I would succeed.
In the first few years when things were going so badly for me I used to think I would die gladly just to make one good picture. It’s obvious that I didn’t die. It was a long time before I made that good picture, and when I did I had no wish to die, gladly or otherwise.
Someone had made the discovery of sex appeal about this time, and apparently it was something that William Haines lacked. They wouldn’t give me a break on that account, and it followed me around like a curse.
Elinor Glyn went a bit further and said I didn’t have IT, and moreover, I was a big ham. I replied that the best hams in the world came from Virginia. I was beginning to wisecrack a bit. God knows I had to do something.
Eventually they found a role that could be played by a young fellow who didn’t have any sex appeal. I was to be given a chance in Three Wise Fools, with Eleanor Boardman playing the leading feminine role.
I had to wear a high silk hat, and I had to wear it while I did my most dramatic scene. I’d never had one on before and it takes a good actor to be emotional in a top hat. I was just as conscious of it as I would have been without my pants. I was terrible, awful.
After that I played the heavy in a picture in which Lew Cody was the hero. That was funny because I had a round babyish face and my dirty work couldn’t have impressed anybody. I wore a high hat in that one, too, but this time it came easier. I had spent several evenings in front of the mirror trying to become friendly with it.
I played the cornfed man-with-the-hoe country lover in The Tower of Lies. This was Norma Shearer’s first big dramatic picture. I felt that everything depended on it. This time it was do or die. I worked myself to such a nervous pitch that one day in the midst of a love scene with Norma I became violently sick at my stomach and had to retire in a hurry to the sidelines.
I told the director that it was just a touch of ptomaine. I couldn’t tell him the real truth. They sent me home, and I spent the rest of the day in bed crying. Then I argued the thing out with myself. Why should I be afraid of the camera? It was an inanimate object and couldn’t reach out and bite me on the chin. It had. the faculty of photographing thought as well as features. I made up my mind that I would think more of what I was doing, to try and live the role. It was a good philosophy and I stuck to it, for I was never afraid or nervous again.
But a philosophy isn’t much good if you don’t get a chance to practice what you preach. After that I played bits without screen credit. It came to me indirectly that the M.-G.-M. organization had made up its mind to worry along without me.
At that time I was earning $5,000 a year. It seemed like an awful lot of money, but then I had to buy clothes, and pay rent on a little two by four apartment in Los Angeles. In addition, I was sending money home. I hadn’t saved a sou, and wouldn’t even be able to get back to New York.
Harry Cohn, the Columbia producer, was a life-saver to me. He asked M.-G.-M. to borrow a leading man for a series of four pictures. They must have been glad to get me off their hands for they fell joyfully on his neck. My first picture at Columbia was The Midnight Express. Elaine Hammerstein was the star.
I had one of those actor proof roles, a young engineer who races to the rescue of something or other. The picture was made for a dill pickle and a cold fried egg, but it was my first success. Sex appeal or no sex appeal, I was popular. Naturally I was happy. I remember that Harry Cohn gave us all gifts at Christmas. I got a bathrobe. The gift business was good. It created a friendly spirit.
Columbia tried to buy my contract option, but when my studio found out that somebody else wanted me they became coy. They asked $20,000, but Cohn didn’t think I was worth that much. So M.-G.-M. had me back on its hands. But the Columbia experience was valuable. It was through The Midnight Express that Mary Pickford chose me for her leading man in Little Annie Rooney.
It was at this time that Brown of Harvard was scheduled to go into production. I determined that nobody but William Haines would play the role of Tom Brown. The executives were just as determined that anybody but William Haines would play it. Jack Conway thought I would be terrible, but Irving Thalberg stood by me through thick and thin. Jack Pickford was to be starred and Conway told me that, of course, he would steal the picture. Pickford was getting $3,000 a week. I made $250. Finally I was given the role, chiefly, I suppose, because it wasn’t suitable to Lon Chaney, Lillian Gish or Conrad Nagel.
I thought and planned for that role. People had told me many times that I looked like Charles Ray. I can see the resemblance, so I determined to take a Charles Ray character, turn him inside out and make of him the freshest punk that ever drew breath. I did the best I could for Tom Brown. Gave him everything that was in me.
One day the supervisor was on the set. I overheard Jack Conway tell him to watch “that fresh punk put the scene over.” At first I thought he meant Pickford. Then I realized he meant me — Pickford was in bed asleep and couldn’t be doing much emoting. That was the first I realized that I was good. Boy, didn’t I take that scene big!
When the picture was completed I forgot all about it. I didn’t expect anything great from it. Jack Pickford was the star. There was just a small credit line saying, “William Haines as Tom Brown.” One day a friend said he had seen a preview of the film. He said that I was a sensation, and that I had the audience lying in the aisles. I thought he was kidding me, and I told him that it was a vaudeville expression, anyway. I was more surprised than anybody when my characterization attracted attention.
I loved that picture. I followed it around, like Mary’s lamb, from theater to theater. One night in a little neighborhood house someone behind me started giving Tom Brown the razzberries. The fellow said, “Look at that big ox, crying. Isn’t he funny looking?” I turned around, gave him plenty of time to recognize the pan, and said, “You’re no Helen of Troy yourself.”
I got the swelled head, an awful case. I was good and, boy! no one knew that better than William Haines. Right after Brown of Harvard I had to go back to Columbia to complete my agreement. This time I thought I was too good for them. What, a big shot working over on Poverty Row?
I was upstage and nobody could tell me a thing. When they wanted me to work at night I said that I had to go to choir practice with Ramon Novarro — that we sang in a Catholic church on Sundays. They gave me a funny look, but I got away with it. It must have been a great day for them when I returned to my own studio.
And then M.-G.-M. did a wise thing with me. They put me in a little picture called Lovey Mary, with Bessie Love as the star. I played a sort of musical comedy milkman. I still put my fingers to my nose when I think of myself in that one. It took the wind out of my sails completely.
I couldn’t be conceited as long as that picture was in circulation.
The rest of my picture career is pretty well known. I played Brown of Harvard seven times. Doolittle in successive pictures was a horse, a niblick, a baseball bat and William Bakewell in West Point. I cried over something in all of them.
I didn’t mind the niblick so much, for at least it was harmless, but it was pretty tough getting sentimental over the polo pony in The Smart Set.
People invariably expect me to be athletic on account of the roles I have played. I am not. I loathe golf and riding. I do like to swim and play tennis.
The woman who meant the most to me during my years in Hollywood was Barbara La Marr. I met her when I was discouraged and most unhappy. She encouraged me and made me believe in myself. She was a wonderful woman. Of all the screen sirens I think she was the greatest — she was always so much the real woman.
Our friendship ended in a quarrel, and three days later she married. I never saw her after that. Perhaps it is strange that we did not meet. But then it is strange, too, that I have worked for several years on the same lot with Greta Garbo, and have never met her.
I was attracted to Pola Negri. I met her first in the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador. Pola was a great scout. I call myself an alumnus of the Pola Negri Finishing School for Young Actors. Another very interesting woman was Peggy Hopkins Joyce. What a technique! No wonder she has a million dollars in diamonds. Once we came West on the same train. I can understand how she fascinates so many men. She makes a life work of keeping them interested. I remember she bought all the fan magazines to read up on the things that would interest me.
The woman who played so great a part in my life in New York also came West to see me at one time. It was a most unhappy association. We got on one another’s nerves. She took a house on Alvarado Street in Los Angeles. Although she didn’t know it, this was the house in which William Desmond Taylor was murdered. She was terribly superstitious and when she found out about it she packed and left town the same day. I’ve never seen her since, but I know that she has married and is living in Europe.
Romances are interesting, but friendships are better. They seem to last longer. Of my friends, Polly Moran is one of the best. I like her because she says what she thinks, makes no pretenses and has a sparkling Irish wit. If people who come to my house don’t like Polly they needn’t come back. We’ve had some grand laughs together. Eleanor Boardman has been another of the best of friends ever since our first meeting in New York.
Parties don’t interest me. I do like to give them, and how I mix crowds! I remember one party at which I entertained some very downat-the-nose society people. Polly was there and she had a swell time horrifying the proper dames. I had an ex-pugilist valet, probably the world’s worst valet, but he was funny. He called me Bill. Well, I had the valet serving the hors d’oeuvres. Polly always called him Meadows. “Meadows,” she said in a broad English accent, “will you be so kind as to pass me some of those little sandwiches? Why, Meadows, I cawn’t take that one. It looks as if someone had nibbled on it and put it back.” And she glared suspiciously at everyone.
One of the best laughs Polly and I ever had came about through an interview. A woman interviewer asked me for a hot news item for her story — something that hadn’t been printed. I thought for a moment, and told her that I was going to marry Polly Moran. The interviewer took it big. She was new to Hollywood and knew very little about picture people. I said that Polly belonged to a fine old Virginia family of fox-hunters. The Morans of Virginia. They’re famous. The wedding was to be quite an event, with Polly wearing a duchesse lace veil that every Moran bride had worn for generations. It was a terrible blow to both of us when the studio publicity department explained to the interviewer that she had been taken in.
Before I die I would like to do a picture with Polly in which she is the leader of a woman’s orchestra. You know the sort of thing. A thin-lipped piccolo player, a stout lady who holds the bass viol in that funny position, and with Polly playing the slide trombone. I’d sit in the front row and eat a lemon, and the trombone would get filled up.
I never go to premieres any more. I avoid them like the measles. One night I was behind all the mobs of people at the Chinese Theater. I heard some of the cracks made about the stars. That cured me of wanting to go. Neither do I believe in personal appearances. It destroys an illusion. The public may find out that you have liver spots and halitosis. Not that I have either, as far as I know, but they say that your best friend won’t tell you.
I have never married. Perhaps I never shall. The marrying age for a man is from twenty to twenty-five. After that he becomes a little more “picky,” less inclined to compromise between sheets and blankets and take sheets. From twenty to twenty-five the heart rules the head and a man spouts Walt Whitman and gets thrills in the moonlight. After that age the head rules the heart, if he has a head. Youth is always intolerant. If I marry I could be happier with a woman of my own age, one who has known the world. But I do not believe that a star should marry.
Stardom was what I set out to win. It makes me happy to know that I have achieved it. The money that I have earned enables me to live in the manner I like. I can buy antiques. Stardom is a shield, too. Gossip doesn’t sting as it did a few years ago, and there is bound to be a certain amount of gossip in Hollywood. You have to talk about something, so why not about each other?
What will I do when the time comes for me to leave the screen? I don’t know. I will be too old to learn anything else.
Mr. William Haines, 1929 Model. Here you see the completed product, graduate of the Pola Negri Finishing School for Young Actors, as he looks in his latest comedy, Navy Blues
William Haines stroking for God, for Country and for Brown of Harvard, his first big film success, which he stole completely from Jack Pickford, its star, and turned into a Haines hit
A shot from Three Wise Fools, in which Haines stunned the art world by making love to EIeanor Boardman, in a plug hat
In Circe, the Enchantress, Mae Murray works her wicked will on Bill Haines, soggy with puppy love and very wet water
Willie Haines grows up. Slick and self-possessed, he plays a scene in A Slave of Fashion with that lovely Norma Shearer
A very young and earnest looking Bill Haines, taken early in his Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film career
Photo by: Clarence Sinclair Bull (1896–1979)
Collection: Photoplay Magazine, October 1929