Hell's Angels

The Hughes folly over which he laboured for nearly three years, going through a slew of directors (including Luther Reed, James Whale and Howard Hawks) at various stages in the hope of making the greatest and most impressively realistic flying movie ever. Saddled with an atrocious boy's own paper plot about a good brother and a bad brother, both in the Flying Corps and clashing over a girl, the end result is barely adequate. But it does feature a spectacularly elaborate World War I dogfight, and an equally fine Zeppelin sequence. And of course there's Harlow, unflatteringly lit and making a nonsense of the plot by playing her character as an unmistakable floozie, but undeniably making an impact.