The Second British Invasion of America

It all began rather innocently: a hotel booking made several weeks in advance for a small group of Englishmen. None of their names—Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Starr—meant anything to the staff until a copy of Life magazine landed on general manager Alphonse Salomone’s desk, opened to a story entitled “Four Screaming Moptops Break Up England. Here Come Those Beatles.” Salomone knew that there was no question that the reservations would be honored, but he wasn’t naïve, and so, in short order, the police commissioner was notified, extra security was hired from Burns Guards, and six small suites for the British guests were blocked out on the Fifty-eighth Street side of the twelfth floor (intentionally away from the main entrances, with windows that faced inside to the hotel courtyard).

Living up to their press clippings, the Beatles arrived on February 7, 1964, in a burst of fanfare. The crowd at the airport followed them to the hotel, then encamped there for the next five days (here). About the most serious infraction of hotel security occurred when two teenage girls managed to smuggle themselves up to the twelfth floor inside a gift box, but they were summarily escorted out. Hotel personnel found the Beatles to be pleasant and unassuming, and quick to oblige when people made photo requests; here, Ringo, Paul, and George pose with Christina Krupka, in a photograph taken by her father, Henry, the owner of D’Arlene Studios. Krupka’s studio was situated off the Fifth Avenue lobby, and he is responsible for many of the photographs in this book dating from the 1950s and 1960s.