Mr. Hughes in Hollywood

Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator put the spotlight on Howard Hughes' brief but tempestuous career in Hollywood, a part of which took place at Hollywood Center Studios.

Hughes left his family's Texas oil drilling business in 1924 and moved to California where he became head of Cado Pictures. He went onto to produce several films, the most notable being Hell's Angels, a 1930 action packed romance about World War I flying aces. Interiors were shot on the HCS lot.

Like so many of Hughes' ventures, the film was conceived on a grand scale. It included some of the most dramatic dog-fighting sequences ever filmed. One scene alone featured 137 pilots. It also includes a spectacular Zeppelin raid on London that was shot with rare two-toned Technicolor process.

Again in typical Hughes fashion, Hell's Angels had a stormy birth. Marshall Neilan, the original director, quit in frustration over the constant interference from the former oilman, and Hughes took the reins himself. Three pilots died during filmmaking. The production took three years to complete and costs sky-rocketed to a then jaw-dropping $4 million.

Sound was just coming into vogue when the movie was being made and Hughes abruptly decided to reshoot portions of the picture with dialogue. He fired his leading lady, the Norwegian actress Greta Nissan because her accent wasn't right, and replaced her with 18-year-old ingénue Jean Harlow in her first major film role.

The sound sequences were shot at what was then called the Metropolitan Sound Studios on a stage that had been newly fitted with Vitaphone equipment, a sound on disc system developed by Bell Laboratories. Because working with the gear was so awkward, only parts of the film were shot with sound.

Modern audiences might be surprised by some of the dialogue immortalized on the film's soundtrack. The Hays Code was not yet in force and so Hughes' fly boys were free to curse with abandon. Harlow's speech is also peppered with sexual innuendo that wouldn't have been allowed in later years, including one of the most famous lines in movie history, delivered in her best boudoir voice: "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?"