March–April 1964, UK
Yet another first—The Beatles’ debut feature film A Hard Day’s Night was the first film ever to go into profit before it had even been released. That was the kind of power the band was now operating on, a power never before bestowed on four musicians. They were a sensation, a phenomenon that no one could get a grip on. Whatever they wanted they were given. Whatever they touched turned into magic. Wherever they went, the whole world went with them.
Every day, multitudes of fans, media and police fought around them, pushing and shoving and shouting, and at the center of it all, always the smiling, laughing, joking Beatles. “Beatlemania was beyond comprehension,” Lennon would later reflect and he was spot on.
The first film the band was offered came from London. The film was called The Yellow Teddy Bears. The plot revolved around a girls’ school—where yellow teddy-bear badges were worn to denote promiscuity—and a well-meaning teacher. The band was initially interested. Cinema was something they had grown up with, an avenue they were very keen to follow. It gave them options. As Lennon would later tell biographer, Ray Coleman, “At least cinema allows you to grow up.”
Once the deal was put on the table, however, the band grimaced. The producers wanted the band to turn up in a couple of scenes and perform some songs, which they would take the copyright on. The Beatles walked away. They felt strongly that although a record might last a month, a film lived forever. Ever conscious of their image, the band agreed that the film they signed up to would have to be something very special to warrant their involvement.
Enter The Goon Show. In 1959 Peter Sellers was looking for a way to transfer The Goon Show from radio to TV. He needed a director who understood surrealist humor and visuals. One night he watched The Dick Lester Show, an ad-libbed show (featuring among others the Liverpool writer Alun Owen) that sought to replicate Goon-like humor on television. Sellers contacted the show’s director, a 23-year-old man named Dick Lester.
Using the 16mm movie camera Sellers had just acquired, plus a field in north London and a cast including Spike Milligan and Graham Stark, they made an 11-minute film they named The Running, Jumping And Standing Still Film (1960). Lester not only directed it but also wrote the music. The footage was for private use but was seen by a TV critic who insisted they enter the piece in the Edinburgh Festival. This they did and the film was eventually given a British cinematic release.
Lester was then employed to direct a film called It’s Trad, Dad! (1962). The film—a musical comedy—had been rushed into production to cash in on the trad-jazz trend that was pervading the UK pop charts. Musicians employed in the film included Chubby Checker, Helen Shapiro, Gene Vincent, Chris Barber and Acker Bilk.
The Beatles saw both of Lester’s films but it was the Running piece that really caught their attention. “We discussed this [a film idea] with Brian on a number of occasions and he asked if we had any ideas of our own,” Paul McCartney recalled. “The only person we could think of was whoever had made the Running Standing film because that was brilliant.”
Lester was a child prodigy, capable of reading and writing up to 250 words by the time he was two. He entered university at age 15 and graduated with a degree in clinical psychology. He went into music and TV, singing in a vocal band and working as a floor manager for CBS. He moved to London and landed the job directing ATV’s jazz show Downbeat. He also befriended the writer Alun Owen who featured in The Dick Lester Show.
It was Owen he turned to for a script, but only after Johnny Speight, later creator of the classic TV series Till Death Us Do Part, had turned him down. Owen, who described himself as “a Bohemian with working-class roots,” was perfect; he was from Liverpool and his last big TV hit, No Trams To Lime Street (1959), had been set in his home town.
The band had seen the play and asked Owen to join them on tour, to observe their characters and capture their unique language. This Owen did although he only stayed a short while with the band. In fact he wrote the script in about a month, a very short time for such an endeavor.
Filming had now been set for March, hence the urgency. Meanwhile the band went into the studio on George’s 21st birthday and over four days recorded seven songs plus a cover of Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally.” This was a band that thrived on pressure, pressure that came unrelentingly from all angles. Yet despite this weight of huge expectation, Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting improved immeasurably.
One only has to hear John’s “If I Fell” and “You Can’t Do That” and Paul’s “And I Love Her” and “Things We Said Today” to see the progression. That such creativity should be reached amid the chaos of Beatlemania is quite astonishing. Success, they both later said, was spurring them on to greater things. When Dick Lester informed Lennon and McCartney that the film was to be named after one of Ringo’s slips of the tongue (after working day and night in the studio once, Ringo remarked it had been a hard day’s night) he asked them to write a song around that title.
Lester figured the task would take the men a week at least. The next day the pair handed over the song, “A Hard Day’s Night.” And it was superb. It was this ability to work so brilliantly under huge pressure that sustained the band’s position as number one for so many years.
Filming started on March 2 and ended on April 24. In the first set of days, filming took place on a train to the West Country. Other locations included Twickenham Film Studios and the Scala Theatre in London. The film was an attempt to capture the band experiencing the phenomenon of Beatlemania while displaying their individual characters.
The band runs down a Notting Hill alleyway while filming A Hard Day’s Night. Britain had not yet fully recovered from the ravages of World War II and the band’s exuberance often contrasted with their dilapidated surroundings.
It was a cinematic trend that began with the Neo-Realist movement in Italy and was realized in Britain later on by directors such as Karel Reisz (Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, 1960) and Lindsay Anderson (This Sporting Life, 1963). The Beatles were keen to tread a similar artistic path. They were sharply aware that pop music films up until that point had been highly risible productions and they wanted no part in following that tradition. Their artistic self-respect, another quality that served to sustain their success, would not allow it. Lennon would later state, “Never mind all our pals, how could we have faced each other if we had allowed ourselves to be involved in that kind of movie?”
Lester and the band worked well together. The director was sensitive to the band’s vision and was keen to incorporate their natural spontaneity as comedians wherever possible. Accordingly the band ad-libbed in many scenes although the need to shoot from different angles did serve to rob a lot of the immediacy. “The director knew we couldn’t act,” Lennon later said. “So he had to try and catch us almost off-guard, only you can’t do that in a film, you’ve got to repeat things over and over. But he did his best. The minutes that are natural stand out like a sore thumb.”
For Ringo, filming was a gas. “It was incredible for me, the idea that we were making a movie. I loved the movies as a kid. I used to go hell of a lot … It was a great fantasy land for me.” At one point American executives asked Lester to wipe The Beatles voices and replace them with the voices of American actors. The outraged Lester told them where to get off. So did The Beatles.
As the filming drew to a close, the soundtrack was now prepared. United Artists, who would release the album in the US, printed up half a million copies of the LP. On Thursday, June 25 they handed over a copy to a prominent New York radio station to preview. Such was the audience’s positive reaction to this batch of new Beatles songs, by Monday advance orders had soared to a million copies. Incredibly, a week later they stood at two million. Cinemas in America, Britain and Europe meanwhile ordered over 1,700 prints. The public was yet to see the film but already it was in profit.
The band’s first film premiere for A Hard Day’s Night, which took place at the Pavilion Theatre in London on July 6, 1964.
The film was edited and put together at breakneck speed. To begin a film in March and have it ready for transmission by July is an incredible feat—but not peculiar in Beatle Land where magical events seem to happen as a matter of course. The band attended two major film premieres to promote it, one on July 6 in London and one on July 10 in their home town of Liverpool.
The band was deeply nervous about going home. Since their move from Liverpool, nasty whispers and rumors had followed them to London—how everyone hated them, how they were traitors, Judases who should have stayed at The Cavern. Knowing Liverpudlians, the band expected in tiny part some public anger to be directed their way as soon as they hit home soil.
No such thing. The nervous Beatles, who landed at Speke Airport (today known as Liverpool John Lennon Airport) then clambered into the obligatory huge limousines, were completely astounded to be greeted by 200,000 cheering Scousers. It was the best homecoming ever. “After this, nothing matters,” Harrison enthused as he looked out over the sea of people. “This is the ultimate.”
