Billy Haines was a silent movie star who made the transition to sound, but when the studio head made the openly gay actor an ultimatum — a sham marriage to a woman, or the end of his movie career. Haines chose love, quitting the movies, holding onto a relationship his friend Joan Crawford called “the happiest marriage in Hollywood,” and got the best revenge of all: living well. Haines reinvented himself as the influential designer of the Hollywood Regency style, hobnobbing with movie stars and heads of state.
Shane Harris — Washington Post reporter, author of the books @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex, The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State, and host of the podcast Chatter, which interviews people at the intersection of storytelling and national security — joins us to talk about the man who invented Old Hollywood glamour, and which director’s personal connection to Haines makes him the perfect choice to tell his story.