The Rolling Stones were among those attending the premiere of A Hard Day’s Night on 6 July 1964, in the gracious presence of HRH Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon.
Outside the London Pavilion, two hundred policemen were restraining 12,000 fans chanting ‘Beatles! Beatles! Beatles!’ The band had still not grown accustomed to such hullabaloo. Approaching Leicester Square in the back of their chauffeur-driven car, John looked out of the window and asked Brian Epstein, in all innocence, ‘Is it a Cup final or something?’
The Beatles’ arrival was accompanied by what one onlooker called ‘an immense throaty roar’, followed by a massed chorus of ‘Happy Birthday to You’. Ringo, the oldest Beatle, would be celebrating his twenty-fourth birthday the following day.
Once the Beatles were safely inside the cinema, a clean red carpet was rolled out by the theatre manager and his staff, just in time for the arrival of the royal party. On the day of their wedding, in May 1960, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon were possibly the most adored people in Britain, perhaps even the world. At that time, up in Liverpool, the Silver Beetles had just failed their audition to support Billy Fury on his northern tour.
But four years on, the crowds made it quite clear which of them inspired the most adoration. After all the mayhem surrounding the Beatles, the arrival of the royal couple seemed a terrible anti-climax, the cheers for the princess and her husband pitiful compared to those that had greeted the band.
As Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon walked into the auditorium, a detachment of trumpeters heralded their arrival with a fanfare, and the Metropolitan Police Band launched into a stately rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’. The audience stood keenly to attention, and so did the Beatles. But Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, sitting in the seats immediately behind the Beatles, refused to budge. Alistair Taylor, Brian Epstein’s personal assistant, was appalled. ‘Of course, John is seen as the great rebel but he wasn’t really like that. In fact, he was the first on his feet when the first bars of the National Anthem were played, and all the other boys stood up. So did everyone else, except for the Rolling Stones. They sat sprawled out as an arrogant gesture of defiance. John was definitely not impressed.’ Forty years on, Taylor still found it hard to contain his outrage. ‘I suppose they thought they were making a point, but they were guests of the Beatles that night and I believe they should have shown more respect.’
After the film, the Beatles were presented to Princess Margaret. Cynthia Lennon had made a special effort. She was wearing a full-length sleeveless dress in black and beige silk from Fenwicks, along with a black Mary Quant chiffon coat, bordered with black feathers. At John’s urging she wore her hair up, to make herself more like Brigitte Bardot. In common with the other Beatles, John wore a dinner jacket and black bow tie. In his first book, In His Own Write, published just three months before, he had referred to the royal couple in his punning way as ‘Priceless Margarine and Bony Armstrove’, but he now seemed cowed in their presence. ‘When it came to meeting royalty in the flesh John was as much in awe as the rest of us,’ Cynthia was to recall. ‘He was so pleased and proud that the princess had come to see the film that his anti-establishment views flew out of the window and he stood red-faced as she spoke to him.’
‘How are you coping with all the adulation?’ asked the princess. Cynthia was unimpressed by such a drab question, and found the princess’s conversation ‘clipped and superficial’. Attempting to draw his wife in, John said, ‘Ma’am, this is my wife Cynthia,’ but the princess offered her only the most cursory of glances. ‘Oh, how nice.’
The reception at the Dorchester was attended by the princess and her husband, though they were due to leave before dinner for another appointment. Brian Jones and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones had not been invited, but had somehow got in, provocatively underdressed in turtleneck shirts. ‘Isn’t this the greatest party crash of all time?’ smirked Jones. The night before, they had appeared on Juke Box Jury: the morning’s newspapers described them as ‘rude’, ‘anthropoid’, ‘boorish’ and ‘charmless’.
The party was an uneasy mix of the old and the new, the young and the old. As a creaky dance orchestra struggled through a selection of tunes from the top 10, an elderly woman in a ballgown buttonholed John.
‘You’re simply darling,’ she said.
‘Can’t say the same for you, love,’ he replied.
Meanwhile, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon were clearly enjoying themselves, and stayed much later than planned. This, in turn, meant that dinner had to be postponed. Unaware of the protocol, George Harrison approached the film’s producer, Walter Shenson, and asked, ‘When do we eat?’ Shenson told him that dinner could not be served until the departure of the royal couple. At this, George strode across to the princess and said bluntly, ‘Ma’am, we’re starved, and Walter says we can’t eat until you leave.’
‘Come on, Tony. We’re in the way,’ replied the princess, taking orders from the youngest of the Beatles. This might be seen as a pivotal occasion in British social life, the moment a princess scuttled away on the orders of a Beatle; for the first time, but not the last, royalty deferred to celebrity.
As the reception drew to an end, everyone grew more relaxed. Brian Jones and Keith Richards were surrounded by begowned and bejewelled autograph-hunters, and Jones was happily signing away. At this point, the orchestra struck up the National Anthem. True to form, Jones ignored it, and carried on signing. ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ hissed an elderly woman in a diamond necklace. In reply, Jones stopped signing, picked up a woman’s scarf from a nearby table, wrapped it around his neck and, in time to the slow drudge of the music, executed a pastiche of a burlesque dancer.
When the orchestra reached the final chorus, John Lennon found his anti-establishment attitudes boosted by champagne and shrieked ‘Go-o-d save the Cream!’ On the way out, he spotted the old woman in the ballgown to whom he had been so terse earlier in the evening. ‘Good night, Mrs Haitch! We’ll dance again some Somerset Maugham!’ he yelled, punningly. Nothing like this had ever happened at the Dorchester before; the times they were a-changin’.