Howard Hughes and the making of Hell’s Angels
Hell’s Angels (1930), directed and produced by Howard Hughes, is an iconic film from the old Hollywood days, in particular due to the messy story behind the making. Messy, to say the least.
Before producing this movie, Howard Hughes was not the Hollywood tycoon we know today. Born and raised in Texas, Hughes inherited most of his father’s Tool Company fortune at age of 18. And, after a legal battle with his family, ended up taking over the whole family’s estate by age 20. So when he arrived in Los Angeles, he was expected to be an other spoiled millionaire satisfying a whim and was believed to be wildly unqualified. To be fair, his first attempts at producing were not successfull and didn’t help the already unfavorable opinion of Hughes, who was seen as a Texas hick...
In 1927, the movie Wings premiered. Directed by William A. Wellman, this World War I epic caused an uproar in Hollywood, later becoming the first winner of the Oscar for best picture. Howard Hughes was as taken aback as everyone else and saw in Wings his chance to break out in Hollywood. So, he took it upon himself to produce a war epic to stand alongside or even surpass Wings.
However, in true Hughes fashion, he decided that this meant go big or go home.
He became obssessed with this movie. It had two different directors, cost a whopping 4 million dollars and took around 3 years to film. And a big reason for this was the fact that Howard Hughes' plan to upstage Wings depended on a very ambitious cinematography for the time, namely the film’s grand finale.
Hughes, who by this point had taken over the direction of the film, wanted for the final scene an aereal shot of a plane plummeting and pulling up at the last moment. After three pilots losing their life performing the stunts demanded by Hughes, the only person who was crazy enough to agree to do it was Howard himself.
He managed to get the effect he wanted. However, he was so focused on the drop, that he didn’t manage to land the plane safely. The crew found the plane shattered on the runaway and a significant amount of blood in the aircraft. For a moment, everyone thought that Hughes had died in a crash, only to find him a few feet away from the destroyed airplane. He was rushed to the hospital, since he had lost a lot of blood and was hallucinating due to shock.
No one has any ideia how he managed to escape alive, nor how he recovered from the crash in a matter of 3 days. But sure enough, after less than a week, Hughes was back in the set. But the troubles didn’t stop here.
Also in 1927, The Jazz Singer premiered, the event that marked the beginning of the end for silent films. And so, after the already tumultuous filming of Hell’s Angels, Hughes had to invest on turning the whole project from a silent film to a sound film. It was around this time that the produciton hit the record buget. Not only did the actors had to re-record their lines, the leads went through changes as well. The original cast featured Greta Nissen, whose norwegian accent wasn’t a problem until the movie turned into a “talkie”. So Hughes casted Jean Harlow as lead actress and had her reshoot everyone of Nissen’s scenes.
At this point, we have to assume that Howard Hughes had given up on recupering his money. You can’t possibly expect to turn a profit after investing 4 million dollars on a film that premiered right after the crash of wall street!
Nonetheless, the movie came out and astounded audiences everywhere. And even though the film didn’t turn a profit, Hell’s Angels earned Howard Hughes a slot in History.
Here he is with lead actress Jean Harlow:
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