I Want to Hold Your Hand? (1978)

Paul and John  entering the Warwick in 1965

 I Want to Hold Your Hand? 

By Susan Maier

With a Little Help From My Friends

July 1978

    I guess the reason I like the movie I Want to Hold Your Hand so much was how those girls tried to get to the Beatles by infiltrating their hotel. Back in August 1965, when the Beatles came to New York for their concert at Shea, my friends and I thought the surefire way to meet them would be to get into their hotel. There were three of us: my friends Phyllis, Fran, and me. 

    First, we tried to make reservations at the hotel. We even got a guy to call up for us to make it sound more businesslike. But there was a convention in town taking up any spare rooms. We hung around the hotel, sitting in the lobby the day before the big arrival of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. One newspaper reporter talked to us and bragged about how he had been upstairs to see the rooms that the Beatles would occupy. We begged him to get us in the next day, but he just laughed and said that he wasn't getting his own daughter in. 

    We met a man who had a steady room at the Warwick, but wouldn't be using it the next day. We offered him some ridiculous sum of money, which we didn't have, to use the room. But of course, he turned us down. The next day, the newspaper mentioned: "three little girls who offered money for the use of a room". They made the money offered even more ridiculous than what we had said!

     It all looked bleak and hopeless. Then we met this guy outside the hotel who told us that there was a mayoral campaign going on in the hotel on the fourth floor, and they were looking for volunteers. We marched on up to the fourth floor, and sure enough, they took us with open arms. We couldn't believe it! They had us addressing envelopes and  pasting articles in scrapbooks. Before we left for the day, they gave us ID passes and special buttons to wear, so we could get past the police barricades the next day. They told us that the Beatles would be arriving tomorrow, as if we didn't already know that.

     Needless to say, none of us slept very well that night. The next morning, after the important decision of what to wear, we set out for the hotel. When we got there, there were crowds of girls already waiting, and police barricades set up two blocks away. We had our special buttons on and flashed our passes at the suspicious-looking police, and walked into the hotel. Oh, what a feeling to walk right into the lobby of the Beatles Hotel with all those girls waiting outside. We thought nothing but nothing could go wrong. 

    We were put to work addressing envelopes again. Luckily, Phyllis had brought a small transistor radio, which we managed to listen to, so we would know what was going on. Every once in a while, screams would fill the air from the street below, and we had all to do from flying out of our seats. All of a sudden, there was such a commotion from below that even the people around us started running to the windows to see what was happening. We ran with them, and from the open windows we could see down to the hotel entrance very clearly. A Rolls-Royce had drawn up, and four figures were being ushered into the hotel. I couldn't see their faces; just four heads of long hair. We were ecstatic!  We went back to addressing envelopes until we could think of the next move to make. Who could work now? 

    There were a few other girls working there who had the same idea as us, but they didn't hide their purpose as well as we did. Then over the radio came the news that the four guys that had just arrived at the Warwick Hotel in a Rolls were imposters. They were a group called the Teddy Boys. We were sick. This meant that the Beatles were still on their way from the airport, and we didn't know what to do next. Fran decided to walk down to the lobby and see if anything was happening. She was very quickly chased back upstairs. Meanwhile, Phyllis and I had gotten friendly with one of the elevator operators, and he took us up to the penthouse where the Beatles were to stay.  He opened the doors and we just stood there stunned. We didn't get out of the elevator. I'll never know why. He couldn't stay at that floor for more than a minute because they could tell in the lobby what floor he was stopped at and he wasn't supposed to be there. So he took us back down to the fourth floor. First chance down the drain.

     Next, we met up with this other girl who told us to follow her. She led us around and around. I don't think she knew where she was going. We went down some back stairs and right into a room with long tables set up and cartons of Coke stacked up. We didn't realize until later that we had walked right through what was probably the press conference room. We could have hidden under the tables because they had long white tablecloths over them. We could have waited to see what would have happened. I can just imagine us being found under the table at the Beatles' feet. So much for our second chance.

     Anyway, there was this nice older woman back on the campaign floor, and we got to talking. She led us on a stairway, and at the bottom there was a young policeman standing in front of a bank of elevators. As best we understood it, the Beatles were to come through there into their press conference. The cop said we couldn't stay there, but the woman persuaded him to let us stay. We swore that we wouldn't come off the steps. He was really very nice and said okay, but to stay seated. We thought that finally our luck was coming through. Well, out of nowhere, this nasty man came down the stairs and told us that if we were still there when he returned, he would call the police. He left, and yes, you guessed it. So did we. Looking back, I'll never understand why we didn't just stay there. Maybe he never came back, and if he did, what could he have really done to us?

     By this time, the people running the campaign headquarters were wise to our real motives for working there. They told us they needed our badges back because they were issuing new ones with a different design for the next day. Of course, that was it. We were finished. Without badges, we couldn't get back into the hotel anymore. And to think, the three of us put in more work there than the other people running the thing. That guy who was running for mayor lost anyway. I just wish that our experiences in the Warwick Hotel had had a happy ending.  But you know, I wouldn't have missed it for the world, even the way it was. As the newspaper pointed out, there were eight teenage girls working as volunteers, but it wouldn't do them any good. There were just four floors closer to the Beatles than the girls on the street, and I, for one am, glad that I was one of those eight girls.