The day after Christmas, Joan had a call from Jimmy Shields: Billy Haines had succumbed to cancer at the age of seventy-three. She was confined with bronchitis that week and could not attend the funeral in California, but she telephoned Jimmy every day for almost a month, which comforted him enormously; they reminisced, laughed and wept together. Three months later, Jimmy wrote a note—"It’s no good without Billy"—and took an overdose of sleeping pills. With those two deaths, as Joan said, she lost “the happiest married couple I ever knew.” Joan
