Howard Hughes by Clifford Irving Page A

Krauts, and being ordered to jump by the captain, they jump. I shot that on the sound-stage, one of the few action scenes in that film that was shot indoors. We had a beautiful montage with a dark cloudy background. The men had to jump from the Zeppelin, down through the clouds. Of course we had a stack of mattresses on the bottom of the studio to catch them. That was one of the most dangerous scenes we shot. A lot of people thought the air stuff was the most dangerous, but this was worse, because the men had to land right on the mattresses, jumping from about forty feet, and those stunt pilots – guys who would do an Immelman or an outside loop without blinking an eye – were crapping in their pants. I shot that scene fifty or sixty times, because I wanted a certain effect.
    Fifty or sixty times? Are you sure?
    I’m not exaggerating. It took days. I drove people crazy. I finally gotwhat I wanted in one sequence when the hat came off one of these Krauts’ heads as he jumped. You saw that hat spinning through the air, and it gave a special feeling to the scene.
    Noah was standing around the lot, and he had seen some of the rushes. He was pissing and moaning because he was thinking, that’s our money going down the drain. Already he was thinking about it as our money. He told people that any one of these rushes was just as good as any other. ‘I can’t see what Howard is after.’ But I knew what I was after and when I saw that one sequence, with the hat spinning slowly through the air, I thought, that’s it.
    After all this time, I consider Hell’s Angels to be the best picture I ever made. It took me three years and over two million feet of film, not to mention over four million prewar dollars, but it still holds up. I looked at it not so very long ago and the dogfights were still the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen on the screen in the way of aerial battles. We had good technical men in Hollywood even then, and they’re always the key people.
    The acting, in retrospect, doesn’t measure up. I’d cast a Swedish actress called Greta Nissen in the female lead. She was one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, but she couldn’t speak English. When I decided to reshoot more than half the movie in sound, it was obvious that Greta had to go. Years later, by the way, they made a movie based on this situation – Singing in the Rain , with Gene Kelly. Nobody paid me a dime.
    Arthur Landau, Greta Nissen’s agent, gave me a real sob story about her. I said, ‘What do you suggest I do?’
    Arthur sighed. ‘If you’re going to dump Greta,’ he said, ‘the least you can do is take another girl from my stable.’
    ‘Who did you have in mind?’
    ‘You’ll love her. Her name is Jean Harlow.’
    She’d been Harlean Carpenter until a few years before that, and in a few weeks she was the star of Hell’s Angels – her first leading role. It made her famous. She never wore a bra – that was the Harlow trademark.
    Were you involved with her personally? 
    ‘Involved’ is too strong a word. If you want to know whether or not I had an affair with her, the answer is yes. I went to bed with her because she was the star and I was the director and in those days it was one of those obligatory things to do. She came to my office one evening after the shoot and asked me to read some lines with her. I did that, of course, and the next thing I knew she was down on her knees, unbuttoning my fly to give me a blow job. I said, ‘Jean, this isn’t necessary. You’ve got the part.’ She answered something, but since she had her mouth full I couldn’t make out what she said. I just decided to relax and enjoy it.
    Later, on a few occasions, we made love on the couch there, and at her house. I soon grew tired of her. She had an appeal to me, in a kind of overblown, sexy way, but after a while we had nothing to say to each other. And as an actress she was awful. I tried as hard as I could to get her to speak with just the