Movie Role Bug Beatles (1965)

 Movie Role Bug Beatles

By Robert Musel (UPI)

Oakland Tribune

December 20, 1965

    The fog was so thick, the four young millionaires took an hour to drive two miles, and when they reached their hotel, they were able to slip swiftly inside, unseen, while girl fans groped blindly in the cotton wool mist outside, uttering despairing cries of, "Where are you, John? Or "Paul?" Or "Ringo?" or "George?"

     But there was sterner business on hand for the Beatles than their usual broken field run through teenage tacklers. Until dawn broke over Manchester with the sun like a hazy gray egg yolk, they talked about the most critical decision of their film career thus far. To wit, what kind of film do we do next?

     Although it is fashionable and has been for months to talk about the end of the Beatle era, the present concert tour of the hairy foursome is a hysterical sell out everywhere, and their latest single record, "Day Tripper", went right to the top of almost every British charts The advanced sale on their new album, Rubber Soul is over half a million. So it was not their image as musicians and songwriters that concerned them this vital night.

     After three years, the troubadour tycoons considered themselves firmly established. Not so in films, however, and their producer, Walter Shenson, called the session to order by asking the boys for ideas.

     This much quickly emerged according to Shenson's first-come, first-served principle. "The problem is that the boys quite rightly want to break away from making films about the Beatles, and it's a decision for which they deserve a lot of credit. A Hard Day's Night was a kind of documentary about the daily life of the Beatles, and a worldwide hit.

     "Help! was, you might say, a cartoon strip involving the Beatles. And it is also providing very successfully. But neither of these require a great deal of acting."  In Help!, they were moved around more or less like puppets by  American New Wave director Dick Lester; everything happened around them, not to them. 

    These films serve the purpose of providing the fantastic pulling power of the Beatles at the box office. Now they must move on. Shenson, a San Franciscan, has frank respect for the talent and mentality of the Beatles. "I try to guide them, but I don't force them," he says. "I know what they want and what they would like to do is what the Marx Brothers used to do. The films always starred the Marx Brothers, but they were always shown playing their roles inside a well-defined plot-- at an opera, for instance, or in a South American Revolution."

     Questions from the floor from John Lennon: "What about a cowboy movie?" This was kicked around for a while. "One advantage," Lennon said, "is that there were no Beatles 100 years or so ago, and that's a good reason for thinking about it."

     "Maybe a Three Musketeers idea?"

     "What about songs? From Shenson

    " Oh, we'll get the songs in, all right."

     Another suggestion has the boys acting as would-be burglars bungling a job. Paul McCartney is very partial to this one. 

    "I asked them," Shenson said later, "whether in the next film, we would be able to develop relationships. For example, they might have girlfriends, and would this affect their image? They said they didn't think their fans would worry about it for more than five seconds."

     As Shenson departed from London after A Hard Day's Night of conferring with the stars, he said, "We've gotten this far. We are looking for a good story. The background doesn't matter, nor does the location, but it must provide opportunities for the boys as actors.

     "The Beatles will not be the first to have become film stars before they establish a reputation as actors."

     Friends of the Beatles believe, incidentally, that the long romance of McCartney and pretty redhead actress Jane Asher may soon make him the third married Beatle. Both Lennon and Ringo Starr are fathers, but George Harrison steadily claims he is only good friends with everybody.