| Hell's Angels | |
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theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | Howard Hughes James Whale (uncredited) Edmund Goulding (uncredited) |
| Produced by | Howard Hughes |
| Written by | Harry Behn Howard Estabrook Joseph Moncure March (uncredited) |
| Starring | Jean Harlow Ben Lyon James Hall |
| Music by | Hugo Riesenfeld (uncredited) |
| Cinematography | Tony Gaudio Harry Perry |
| Editing by | Douglass Biggs Frank Lawrence Perry Hollingsworth (uncredited) |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) | November 15, 1930 |
| Running time | 127 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3,950,000 |
| Box office | $8,000,000 |
Hell's Angels is a 1930 American war film, directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jean Harlow, Ben Lyon, and James Hall. The film, which was produced by Hughes and written by Harry Behn and Howard Estabrook, centers on the combat pilots of World War I. It was released by United Artists[1] and earned back its costs twice.
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Roy (James Hall) and Monte Rutledge (Ben Lyon) are very different British brothers studying at Oxford together at the onset of World War I. Mild-mannered Roy is in love with and idealizes the apparently demure, but wayward, Helen (Jean Harlow). Monte, on the other hand, is a free-wheeling womanizer who can't refuse any woman's advances. A German student by the name of Karl (John Darrow) is best friends to both. After the outbreak of World War I, Karl is recruited into the German Air Force and the two British brothers enlist in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC); Roy enthusiastically as a sense of duty and Monte doing so only to get a kiss from a girl at the recruiting station. After their training, Roy finally introduces Monte to Helen, who seduces Monte.
Meanwhile, Karl is serving aboard a Zeppelin airship that is flying over London for an attack from high above the clouds. Karl is the bombardier-observer as he is lowered below the clouds in a pod, but because of his love for England he directs the Zeppelin over a pond on a farm and bombs that instead. Before his superiors find out, RFC fighters are summoned, including Roy and Monte, to shoot down the Zeppelin. Unbeknownst to them, the airship commander (Carl von Haartman) decides to sacrifice Karl by cutting the cable that secures his pod in order to obtain more altitude and speed to escape the English fliers. The sacrifice is in vain, as are the suicides of fellow German crewman who lighten the ship by obediently leaping to their deaths "for Kaiser and fatherland" in a harrowing decision. German machine gunners manage to shoot down Roy and Monte's aircraft, which has a deeply unsettling effect on the latter. After his machine guns jammed on him, the last British pilot aloft steers his fighter into the dirigible, killing all aboard in a blazing fireball.
Later, in France, Monte is branded a coward for faking illness to avoid combat. Under pressure to prove that he is not yellow, Monte volunteers for a dangerous mission the next morning which will attempt to destroy a vital enemy weapons depot with a captured German bomber, and allow a British brigade a better chance in their attack the next afternoon. If shot down and captured, it is likely that Monte will face a German firing squad as a spy. Roy quickly volunteers to fly the German bomber.
Later that night hours before the raid, Roy discovers Helen in a nightclub in the arms of another officer. When he tries to bring her home, she turns on him aggressively, revealing that she never loved him, that she is, in fact, not the young innocent he believed her to be. Roy is devastated and joins Monte in pursuit of other women. Later Monte decides not to carry out the mission and stay with a pair of wild girls; however, Roy drags Monte back to the airfield.
The raid on the German munitions dump is successful. However, they were spotted by a German fighter squadron. Monte defends the bomber with a machine gun until British fighters arrive, and dogfight ensues. Even though the British dominate the combat, the brothers are shot down and captured. Given the option of a firing squad or treason, Monte's cowardice prevails; he succumbs to pressure and decides to betray the British attack in order to save his life.
Roy acts in order to protect thousands of British troops who would be harmed by Monte's betrayal. Roy convinces Monte that he can affect the betrayal more smoothly, and then tricks the German officer into giving him a pistol to kill Monte as a condition of the betrayal. The general (Lucien Prival) gives Roy a gun with just one bullet and has him escorted back to his cell. Roy shoots Monte, then cradles his dying brother. In an emotional scene, Monte tells Roy that he did the right thing because British soldiers' lives will be saved. The German general arrives in time to witness the relationship of the two brothers, and Monte dies. Roy says that he will tell the Germans nothing. Realizing that he has been tricked, the general has Roy executed.
On returning to his office, the German hears the sounds of a massive bombardment. A British attack on the German front lines has successfully begun.
(in order of film credits)
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Jean Harlow | Helen |
| Ben Lyon | Monte Rutledge |
| James Hall | Roy Rutledge |
| John Darrow | Karl Armstedt |
| Lucien Prival | Baron Von Kranz |
| Frank Clarke | Lt. von Bruen |
| Roy Wilson | "Baldy" Maloney |
| Douglas Gilmore | Capt. Redfield |
| Jane Winton | Baroness Von Kranz |
| Evelyn Hall | Lady Randolph |
| William B. Davidson | Staff Major |
| Wyndham Standing | RFC squadron commander |
| Lena Melana | Gretchen, waitress |
| Marian Marsh | Girl selling kisses |
| Carl von Haartman | Zeppelin commander |
| Ferdinand Schumann-Heink | First Officer of zeppelin |
| Stephen Carr | Elliott |
| Thomas Carr | Pilot |
| Rupert Syme Macalister | Pilot |
| J. Granville-Davis | Pilot |
| Hans Joby | Von Schlieben |
| Pat Somerset | Marryat |
| Wilhelm von Brincken | Von Richthofen |
Originally, the film was to star James Hall and Ben Lyon as Roy and Monte Rutledge, and Norwegian silent film star Greta Nissen as Helen, the female lead, and was to be directed by Marshall Neilan; a few weeks into production, however, Hughes' overbearing production techniques forced Neilan to quit. Hughes then hired a more pliable director, Edmund Goulding, but took over the directing reins when it came to the frenetic aerial battle scenes. Midway through production, the advent of the sound motion picture came with the arrival of The Jazz Singer. Hughes incorporated the new technology into the half-finished film, but the first casualty of the sound age became Greta Nissen due to her pronounced Norwegian accent. He paid her for her work and cooperation and replaced her, because her accent would make her role as a British aristocrat ludicrous. The role was soon filled with a teenage up-and-coming star found by Hughes himself, Jean Harlow.
When Hughes made the decision to turn Hell's Angels into a talkie, he hired a then-unknown James Whale, who had just arrived in Hollywood following a successful turn directing the play Journey's End in London and on Broadway, to direct the talking sequences; it was Whale's film debut, and arguably prepared him for the later success he would have with the feature version of Journey's End, Waterloo Bridge, and, most famously, the 1931 version of Frankenstein. Unhappy with the script, Whale brought in Joseph Moncure March to re-write it. Hughes later gave March the Luger pistol used in the famous execution scene of the film's ending. [2]
The two talking scenes filmed in Multicolor but printed by Technicolor, provide the only color film footage of Jean Harlow. (Multicolor was not prepared to print the number of inserts needed for the wide release Hughes wanted.) The inexperienced actress, just 18 years old at the time she was cast, required a great deal of attention from Whale, who shut down production for three days while he worked Harlow through her scenes.
During the shoot, Hughes designed many aerial stunts for the dogfighting scenes. Pioneering aerial cinematographer Elmer Dyer captured many of the actual aerial scenes. Hughes hired actual World War I pilots to fly the stunt planes, but they reportedly refused to fly for the final scene. The aviator in Hughes came out and he flew the scene, getting the shot. As the pilots predicted, however, he crashed the aircraft, escaping with only minor injuries. Three other aviators and a mechanic were not as lucky. Aviator Al Johnson crashed after hitting wires while landing at Caddo Field, near Van Nuys, California. C. K. Phillips crashed while delivering an S.E.5 fighter to the Oakland shooting location. Rupert Syme Macalister, an Australian pilot, was also killed. Mechanic Phil Jones died during production after he failed to bail out before the crash of a German Gotha bomber, piloted by Al Wilson, which had been doubled by Igor Sikorsky's Sikorsky S-29-A, his first biplane built after his arrival in the United States.
Due to the delay while Hughes tinkered with the flying scenes, Whale managed to entirely shoot his film adaptation of Journey's End and have it come out a month before Hell's Angels was released; the gap between completion of the dialogue scenes and completion of the aerial combat stunts allowed Whale to be paid, sail back to England, and begin work on the subsequent project, making Whale's actual (albeit uncredited) cinema debut, his second film to be released.
There are many traits of pre-code Hollywood in this movie. In addition to some fairly frank sexuality, there is a surprising amount of adult language (for the time) during the final dogfight sequence, e.g. "son of a bitch", "goddamn it", and "for Christ's sake".
Hell's Angels received its premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on May 24, 1930. All the stars and makers of the film attended, as well as Buster Keaton, Dolores del Río, Norma Talmadge, Mary Pickford, Billie Dove, Douglas Fairbanks, and Charlie Chaplin with his girlfriend Georgia Hale. A program with leather cover was designed for the premiere by famed aviation illustrator, Clayton Knight.
While Harlow, Lyon, and Hall received mixed reviews for their acting, Hughes was praised for his hard work on the filming and aircraft sequences. The film went into general release on November 15, 1930 in the United States and did quite well at the box office, earning nearly $8 million, about double the production and advertising costs. After inflation, this is roughly equivalent to $105 million as of 1 January 2010.
The film received an Academy Award nomination for the Best Cinematography (Tony Gaudio and Harry Perry).[3]
Like many other classic films, Hell's Angels has been re-released on VHS and DVD formats by Universal Studios, which in later years acquired the rights to the film. In its original British release, the censor cut more than 30 minutes from the film.[4]
In 1962, film director Stanley Kubrick cited Hell's Angels as one of his 10 favorite movies that influenced his later career. [5]The 1977 TV film The Amazing Howard Hughes has one passage where Hughes (Tommy Lee Jones) directs the Zeppelin segment over and over in non-stop takes. Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, a 2004 biopic of Hughes, deals in part with the making of Hell's Angels and its premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
The involvement of Howard Hughes in this film has spawned a fascinating niche within entertainment, aviation and militaria collectible enthusiasts. Aviation enthusiasts regularly reference the quality and authenticity of World War I aviation in the film.[6] The Luger pistol used in the final scene has generated some recent publicity due to its public auction scheduled in the fall of 2011.[7][8]
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