This Early War Movie Was a Deadly Production That Took 3 Years To Make

When the name Howard Hughes is invoked, people probably conjure up one of a few images: Leonardo DiCaprio, airplanes, Hollywood starlets. Hughes was the millionaire playboy who decided to dabble in every whim of interest his heart desired. After some initial success in silent pictures, including the film Two Arabian Knights, which won Lewis Milestone an Oscar for directing, Hughes embarked on one of the most ambitious projects in Hollywood history.

It was the kind of movie where even the things that went right only happened because something went wrong. It took years to complete, and they stopped and started rolling cameras over and over again. There were cast changes, rewrites, injuries, death, technical alterations... you name it, it happened with this movie. Its production became so notorious, in fact, that it served as a narrative launching pad for Martin Scorsese's Hughes biopic, The Aviator in 2004. Safe to say, there was nothing safe about making 1930's Hell's Angels.

'Hell's Angels' Was a WWI Epic That Took to the Skies... Literally

Hell's Angels follows two World War I British brothers (Ben Lyon and James Hall) in the Royal Flying Corps. Each is in love with the same woman — of course — and conflicts ensue, spliced between scenes of epic aviation battles.

The scenario combines Hughes' two greatest obsessions: glamour and planes. As some reviews point out, it seems almost as if the story takes a backseat to the spectacle. Ian Nathan wrote in a retrospective review for Empire Magazine, "Should be judged in context but even then it's a bit high on the melodrama and low on subtlety." Even critics at the time spent more time discussing the technical aspects than any of the drama happening on screen. "These air scenes, with the crashing of flaming planes, have never been matched on the screen," Mordaunt Hall extolled in The New York Times.

'Hell's Angels' Was Jean Harlow's 'A Star is Born' Moment

The film includes the first true star turn from legendary Hollywood blonde bombshell Jean Harlow, who has the "it" factor, even if her performance was criticized as wooden at the time. In a recent review of the 4K UHD Blu-ray, Jake Cole wrote for Slant Magazine that in spite of Harlow's "inexperience" and "awkward line deliveries...her screen presence is so magnetic that it’s no wonder she was the centerpiece of the film’s marketing."

Within a few years, Harlow would be the biggest star in Hollywood, her acting polished and her movies making a mint at the box office for MGM. With this independent United Artists release, Harlow was truly discovered, built up by Hughes' publicity team as the next big thing. With Harlow's casting, though, is one of many threads that showcase what a difficult project Hell's Angels was to produce. Harlow was not the first actress to be cast in the role of the seductive Helen. Initially, she was played by Greta Nissen, a Norwegian actress who had become popular in American films.

Hell's Angels was intended to be a silent film. Its production began just as the Warner Bros. feature The Jazz Singer, famous for being credited as the first full-length feature to include synchronized dialogue, hit theaters. As it became a sensation and the production for Hell's Angels dragged on, it became obvious that the movie would have to be converted into sound in order to make money. A full year-and-a-half later, when the rest of Hollywood had essentially given up on new silent films, Hughes decided to reshoot the entirety of Hell's Angels as a sound movie. Nissen had a heavy accent, one that the early, tinny microphones of the era had difficulty picking up clearly. Enter Harlow.

At this point, copious amounts of aerial footage had already been shot featuring the stunning plane battle sequences — sound was simply added later for these sequences. These shots, even viewed nearly 100 years later, rank amongst the most impressive ever committed to film. It is clear, from their intricate staging and choreography, what the appeal of telling a war story was for the adventure-minded Mr. Hughes. Getting it to work, however, was a treacherous task. Hughes was careful to cast real pilots and utilize authentic planes to stage the action. So dangerous (and accurate) were these aerial showcases, in fact, that reportedly three stunt pilots died during production. Hughes was even reportedly injured in one stunt he insisted on performing himself. Many of these plane maneuvers, captured over California skies in both the Los Angeles and Oakland areas, were shot and reshot, as Hughes strove to not just capture the footage, but also to do so with the appropriate lighting and even cloud formations.

Hughes, however, was not the only director. His task was producing and directing the aerial sequences. The dialogue director was a different matter entirely. The first director, Marshall Neilan, quit. Luther Reed and Edmund Goulding also logged hours on Hell's Angels. Finally, James Whale came in at the point, notching the first of dozens of American film credits. Whale would become one of the most celebrated visionaries of early sound film, with movies such as Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and Show Boat. He was also portrayed in his own biopic by Ian McKellen (Gods and Monsters).

Part of 'Hell's Angels' Was Filmed in an Early Color Process

Beyond the plane footage, Hughes also decided to bring color into his spectacle, with an extended party scene shot in the then-new two-strip Technicolor process. While not perfected as the company's later three-strip process would be, the hue of these scenes lint an extra umph to an already larger-than-life product. One that was finally released in 1930. Most contemporary notices concentrated on that much-ballyhooed spectacle, even though they largely also shrugged at elements of the plots and the performances.

By the point it reached theaters, Hell's Angels was one of the most expensive movies ever made, advertised as $4 million — though the actual figure is topic of debate. That would be roughly $77 million in today's dollars. This meant that it took decades for the movie to break even, because even managing impressive box office performance upon release, the production costs were too high to overcome. As of 2025, the full spectacle that is Hell's Angels is available to view in all its glory — restored to image-and-sound perfection — as part of the Criterion Collection.

Hell's Angels is available to stream on Prime Video, Roku, and Tubi in the U.S.