Yesterday we began a weeklong look at Howard Hughes’ landmark 1930 World War 1 aerial epic ‘Hells Angels’ by viewing the film’s brilliantly achieved air-born climax. Today we hit the ground with a resounding thud and move from the astoundingly impressive to the astoundingly awful, with a two-part scene set at a fancy party and featuring the wooden acting and stilted dialogue (or is it the other way around?) that mars the films non-aerial sequences. If you’ve ever had the odd and memorable experience of driving in a truly old car–a 1920s or 30s model–you know how every device that’s exists on current day cars–speedometer, radio, gearshift–is there but is stunningly different. You can tell what each device does…but it somehow belongs to another world, another planet. Such is the effect of watching people behave in movies from this era. They’re people…and they’re talking and behaving and relating to each other just like we do…but in a different and weird way that bears as much resemblance to our behavior as the console-mounted gearshift on a Dusenberg does to an Escalade.

Having said that, the scene is of real historical value due to having been shot in color–the only time that Jean Harlow was ever photographed in anything but black and white. She’s very beautiful and her acting is very poor indeed. It seems worlds away from the Harlow of MGM just two years later–the vivacious, confident and saucy dame we know from ‘Reckless’ and ‘Bombshell’. The scene was filmed in an early pre-Technicolor process called ‘Multicolor–Hughes had wanted to shoot more of the film using the process but Multicolor was not prepared to print the number of inserts needed for the wide release Hughes wanted. As mentioned yesterday, a beautifully restored complete print of the film is up (for the time being anyway) on YouTube for your edification, enjoyment and free viewing.