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| Early Birds wait for Beatles' Show to Begin Lorraine Chirkus, Linda Santackas, Maria Lecius Record American Photo/Carroll Myett |
By Irene Michalek and Bill Duncliffe
Elliot Norton heard the news, and took a quick vacation.
Peggy Doyle began to cry, and as she was being dragged out of door on her way to the Mayflower, kept pleading that she could do her best review from the women's wear counter of the department store--any one of them.
Because both Norton and Miss Doyle are cowards, as well as critics, it fell to us to do a front-line review of the Beatles' new movie, "a Hard Day's Night," that opened at the Mayflower and just about every place else but the Fogg Museum- Wednesday.
The movie, you should excuse the expression, is a blast--we think.
We really couldn't hear too much of the chamber music the shaggy-dog singers were playing because the Mayflower was peopled with teenage girls who jumped up and down, screamed, grabbed their hair, screamed, tried to pull the ears from their heads, screamed, moaned, swayed from side to side, snuffled and screamed.
Every once in a while, when the volume fell a bit, some crank would yell: "Shaddap, will ya?"
That made the girls scream some more.
The first show was at 10 a.m but three hours before that the bobbysox set was lining up outside the theater, hair in curlers and tickets clutched in their fists.
When the doors opened they moved like running guards, scrambling for the seat down front so they could be near their true loves. Those at the end of the line refused to go in because they figured they'd have to sit in back, or on the sides, and who wanted to see the mop-haired minstrels from angles like that?
So they stayed outside, and waited for the next show.
Inside, it was like the end of the world, with sound effects. The movie's opening scene showed the Beatles running away from a flock of wild-eyed members of the feminine gender.
the girls on the screen were screaming, and so were those in the seats, but you couldn't tell whether it was from rage or frustration, or a pin sticking through the cushion.
The movie, it seemed had to do with Ringo's mistaken notion that Paul, John and George didn't like him. So he ran away and the others tried to find him. And considering the fact that their hair was in their eyes all the time, it really was quite a job.
Or maybe it wasn't quite that way at all. Maybe it was that Paul's grandpa convinced Ringo he was working too hard banging the drums and should do a little kicking the gong to relax a bit.
So Ringo took off, and the other thought he'd run away because he thought they thought he was a creep, and they didn't think so at all.
It was hard to tell just what was happening up there on the screen, but it didn't seem to make much difference.
"Oooh, I'm still shaking," she squealed, "Ringo looked so sad that I cired. It was just beautiful, beautiful..."
"Did you like the songs they sang?"
She looked at us like we'd just sprouted another set of ears. "Who heard anything, for heaven's sake!" she shouted.
When when you come right down to it, was as accurate a preview as you could get.
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