The making of this film is depicted in the first act of The Aviator, Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning biopic about Howard Hughes, who as a movie producer had a run of three hits in a row in the early thirties, with Hell’s Angels, The Front Page and Scarface.  After that he virtually abandoned the cinema in favour of aviation, but did return to make a few films in the forties.  Over his career he could lay claim to having made stars of both Jean Harlow and Jane Russell, and Hell’s Angels contains the only colour footage of the former in existence.

Jean Harlow was a brassy, wisecracking comedy actress who became the first sex symbol of the talkies, and later one of the most tragic figures of the Golden Age.  Immensely popular with the male Hollywood community, she was involved in scandal when her husband, producer Paul Bern, committed suicide – allegedly because of Harlow’s affairs with such as Clark Gable.  Harlow claimed that Bern had beaten her, causing kidney damage, and years later when she collapsed due to kidney failure, her mother – a religious fool – refused to allow her medical treatment, and she died… at the age of 26.

Halliwell gave Harlow this dedication in the Filmgoer’s Companion:

‘For combining a sophistication which she acted with an innocence which was her own.’

 

Year: 1930