William Haines

William Haines has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to Motion Pictures, at 7012 Hollywood Boulevard. Jaeckel died in 1997 after a three year battle with melanoma cancer at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. They were interred side by side in the Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery. Ben Edwards on the series Baywatch. Shields committed suicide soon after. In his later years, Jaeckel was known to TV audiences as Lt. Haines died from lung cancer in Santa Monica, California. The highlight of Jaeckel's career was in 1971, when he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Sometimes a Great Notion.

Joan Crawford, a lifelong friend described them as "the happiest married couple in Hollywood". Jaeckel's other films include The Gunfighter, Come Back, Little Sheba, 3:10 to Yuma, Town Without Pity, The Dirty Dozen, Chisum Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Grizzly, Twilight's Last Gleaming, The Dark Cold River, Starman, Black Moon Rising and The Delta Force 2. Haines and Shields remained together for the rest of their lives. He served in the US Navy from 1944 to 1949, then starred in two of the most remembered war films of 1949, Battleground and Sands of Iwo Jima with John Wayne. Gloria Swanson extended him a personal invitation to appear with her in the film Sunset Boulevard (1950) but he refused. A casting director audtioned him for a key role in the 1943 film Guadalcanal Diary, Jaeckel won the role and settled into a lengthy career in supporting parts. Haines never returned to films. Jaeckel got his start in the business at the age of 17 while working as a mailboy at 20th Century Fox studios in Hollywood.

The couple finally settled into the Hollywood community in Malibu, and their business prospered until their retirement in the early 1970s. A short, but tough guy, he played a variety of characters in his 50 years in movies and television and became one of Hollywood's best known character actors. Marion Davies asked Hearst to use his influence to ensure the neighbours were prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but ultimately Haines and Shields chose not to report the incident. Jaeckel was born in Long Beach, New York. Crawford, along with other stars such as Claudette Colbert, Kay Francis and Charles Boyer urged the men to report this to the police. Richard Hanley Jaeckel (October 10, 1926 - June 14, 1997) was an American actor. Their lives were disrupted in 1936 when homophobic neighbours, dressed in sheets and wearing hoods to hide their faces, dragged the two men from their home and beat them.

Among their early clients were friends such as Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard, Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst. Haines and Shields began a successful career as interior designers and antique dealers. Haines chose Shields and Mayer terminated his contract, quickly recasting Robert Montgomery in roles that had been planned for Haines. Mayer pressured Haines to end his relationship with Shields and marry. He made a successful transition into talking pictures and maintained his star status until 1934 when Mayer finally delivered him an ultimatum, and forced him to choose between Shields and his career.

Studio publicists were able to keep this information from the press, however studio head Louis B. Haines lived openly as a homosexual man, and from 1926 lived with Jimmy Shields, whom he had met during the production of a film. He appeared in successes such as Sally, Irene and Mary (1926 with newcomers Joan Crawford and Constance Bennett), West Point (1927 also with Crawford), and scored his biggest personal success with Show People (1928), opposite Marion Davies. He was cultivated as a romantic leading man, and his combination of good looks and flair for comedy won him many fans.

By 1925 he was MGM's most important male star, and his films were very profitable for the studio. After winning a talent contest he moved to Hollywood where he played bit parts for several years until MGM Studios began casting him in more prominent roles. Born in Staunton, Virginia, Haines left his home while in his teens and moved to New York City. William Haines (January 2, 1900 - December 26, 1973) was a US film actor who was one of the most successful film stars of the silent era.