Another Blog Brought To You Courtesy Edna And Thinking Time
Also known as 'walkies'. She recognises this word, so to sneak it past her we need to spell it.
CAUTION! SINGLE CONTENT BLOG!
ANYWAY I had an epiphany near the huge rhododendron bush, recalling a bit of what Robert McCammon had written in his afterword to 'Swan Song', where there's a confrontation between the green-fingers-on-turbo girl Swan, and The Man With The Scarlet Eye, a.k.a. 'Friend' which is one of the most ironic titles ever. Art!
Not looking too friendly there, mate
"Swan realises that this demonic figure was once an angel. That within this creature is a longing to return to a state of grace."
Wowsers, so that's 'Friend's backstory: a fallen angel. Thanks for clueing us in, Bob.
ANYWAY AGAIN I wanted to do a deep dive on a film I've just finished watching, "Hell's Angels" and wanted to clear up any confusion about the motorcycle gang. They didn't exist until 1948, and were originally composed of ex-Army Air Force pilots and aircrew, and they came into being at the opposite end of California - although there was a later chapter in Oakland. You'll see. Plus they rode motorcycles, not biplanes. Just to be clear. Art!
ANYWAY ANYWAY back to the film. Just to recap, it's about the Rutledge brothers, staid Roy and playboy Monte, who join the Royal Flying Corps in the First Unpleasantness. Both become pilots. I shall leave out the initial part of the film, mainly since I've covered the Teuton zeppelin raid on London already. We were also introduced to Helen, played by Jean Harlow, in a role that made her a star overnight. Helen, being blunt, is a bit of a loose woman; so loose she nears falling apart. Supposedly Roy's lady, she has an affair with Monte, flirts shamelessly with all the officers she serves at her canteen, and is caught by Roy canoodling with another officer. Art!
That man is a cad and a bounder! He ought to be cashiered! HE HAS HIS BOOTS ON THE TABLE! and O yes the canoodling bit.
The Rutledge brothers have both volunteered for an extremely dangerous stunt the next day: they will pilot a Teuton bomber that had been captured intact, fly over Teuton lines and bomb an ammunition depot. Doing this will almost guarantee British success in a forthcoming attack, as the Hun artillery won't have any ammunition. Nobody asks the embarrassing question of how they get back to British lines, as the RFC will definitely attempt to shoot them down. Art!
This is not a radio-controlled model, it's a real biplane. In fact it's a Sikorsky S-29A, a South Canadian plane tricked up to look like a Teuton Gotha bomber. They only made one of them and at the climax of the film -
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Art!
Note artillery being used as improvised anti-aircraft guns. Art!
One of the film's strong points is that the Teutons are not portrayed as caricatures or evil, nor do they speak cod English with a Teuton accent: they speak German. The Teuton squadron takes to the skies for their morning constitutional, getting uncomfortably near the Rutledge boys. Art!
Despite these pilots being experienced ex-service members, this is a DANGEROUS stunt, with up to sixteen aircraft moving at speed in close proximity; a rut or rock or a sudden gust of wind would cause collisions.
For your information, there were 72 pilots and 65 mechanics employed keeping 'Hughes' Private Air Force' in operation. One pilot died when delivering an airplane to the Oakland site, and two more during production. The final bill for this air force being used came to $1,200,000 and those are 1930 numbers. That's on top of $560,000 used to purchase these planes in the first place. Art!
What Von Bruen is doing here is looking all around him, what we call 'situational awareness' today but in the First Unpleasantness was called 'Beware the Hun in the sun' or 'Brit hiding behind it'; pilots had to constantly scan the skies for enemy or friendly aircraft and most especially look at the sun, as an attacker with any nous used that as their vector. Art!
The Rutledge boys reach the depot
They drop their 6 huge bombs and - you may be ahead of me here - the whole place goes up in apocalyptic style. The pyrotechnic work here is excellent and could teach modern film productions a thing or ten. Art!
These are RC miniatures. Art!
None of those wretched flame-pots here, these are large-scale miniatures and RC vehicles being blown to bits. I bet the set builders had a bit of a bitter-sweet moment when their painstaking replicas were reduced to matchsticks.
Then the Teutons encounter the Rutledge boy's RFC squadron in the skies and a massive dogfight ensues. Art!
The RFC join the party. Hughes did several reshoots of these dogfights because he wanted clouds in the background to give a sense of speed that was absent in an empty sky. In real life the Rutledge boys would have steered their bomber into the clouds to escape the pursuing Teutons, but Hughes must have jibbed at how dangerous this would be. Art!
The Rutledge boys bus gets shot up. Conrad is unsure if this kind of dense bullet strike is realistic or not and one of the 'IMDB' 'Goof' comments mentions the same. However - O that word again! - the twin machine guns on a Teuton plane could pump out 1,000 per minute, or 17 per second. I estimate about 40 bullet holes in the rudder but, again, although that amount of strikes is possible, I strongly suspect they'd be a lot more spread out. Art!
British SE5s to the rescue! I am familiar with these thanks to the 'Biggles' stories of Captain W. E. Johns, where his rival Wilks flies one of these, nicknamed a 'Glasshouse' because they had a small windscreen in front of the pilot. Art!
I counted 17 planes here, with possibly another dozen out of shot. Need I inform you that this is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS stunt work! Simulating a dogfight by using real planes with real pilots is inherently dangerous as the risk of collision is so high.
Also, you can tell which side a plane is on thanks to the machine gun barrel shroud or jacket; Teuton guns had a lot of slats cut out to aid air-cooling, but the British stuck with a solid water jacket on their Vickers guns. Art!
Art!
The PILOTED Sikorski is crash-landed, and I wonder if this is the stunt that the pilots refused to do, and which Hughes did himself. As people say, he got the shot, but he also got a broken jaw and concussion. Art!
As a coda, we get the British attack going in, with a terrific simulation of a Royal Artillery creeping barrage in action, as good as that in 'A Bridge Too Far' which is high praise indeed. Art!
Teuton lines over-run
This was the most popular film in South Canada in 1930 BUT it didn't make a profit, because the cost was so high $3.95 million. I've already mentioned the cost of having an air force; then there's the sets, of which there were 70, constructed at a cost of $800,000 and dressed to the tune of $70,000 and costumes to the value of $160,000. You can see why it didn't make a profit. Art!
Harlow and Hughes. The original lead had been cast before talkies arrived, and proved entirely unsuitable thanks to her heavy Norwegian accent. Enter Jean, recommended to Hughes after being seen at a revue. The legend goes that the entire film was reshot to accommodate her role, which does not bear much scrutiny as only her scenes needed reshooting. Also, the zeppelin and later scenes feature out-of-sync voices, because they were later dubbed in.
Reportedly, one of Stanley Kubrick's favouritest films. Stan: a man with good taste.
