Another interesting newspaper article that I got off ebay. Not sure what magazine this one comes from (Confidential maybe?). But it is a good one to read if you have ever wondered what was going on at those parties the Beatles threw in L.A. while on tour. It was written by an unknown actress/model named Jane Landon and her "strange and boring" time with her friend (also named Jane) at the Beatles party Bel Air in 1964. The fact that she rode around L.A. for a bit with George driving should have been enough excitement for her lifetime, but nope. I wonder what the full story behind John messing up the film in that camera was. I suspect that we don't hear the whole thing here. Shame that the film was ruined regardless, because it would have been neat to have seen some photos from the party. The picture posted here and photos that were published with the original article.
We like our horses slow and our women fast
By Jane Landon
Ringo was dancing with three girls at once. A minute before, he’d been clowning, but now
he was quite serious. Each partner was
spectacularly attired in a high-fashioned cocktail dress. Ringo, by contrast, was wearing blue Levis
and a black shirt with silver buttons.
Altogether, the scene had a kookie, dreamlike quality like the Mad
Hatter’s tea party in “Alice in Wonderland” Approximately thirty-six other
unescorted girls provided a backdrop. Some
were sitting against the wall; some were standing in uncertain little clusters,
and a few of the luckier ones were flanking Beatle George and Beatle John, so
close to them that they could actually exchange words with the sensations from
Liverpool. Beatle Paul was out of
sight. I don’t know where.
When Jane and I had been invited to a cocktail party, we’d
thought it was a little peculiar that the party was set for 9:30pm. Cocktails?
At 9:30?
But we’d never expected anything as peculiar as this.
The Beatles presumably were the hosts at this strange Bel
Air gathering which resembled a cross between a fashion show and a slave
auction.
In order to explain how we got there, how this odd gathering
assembled, I’d better first explain who we are.
Jane and I are two among the many girls who do a little acting, a little
modeling, and who know a great many people at the studios. One afternoon an agency representative called
us and invited us to a party. “The
Beatles are having a party,” our acquaintance said. “If you can go, a limousine will pick you up
at 9:30.”
“I can bring a date, of course, can’t I?” I wanted to know.
“No,” the caller said.
“You’re to come without an escort.”
So that’s how it was.
A few minutes before 9:30, a highly polished limousine stopped at the
door. The big car was crowded, because
six other girls and a driver shared it.
Not one of the girls seemed to know exactly where we were
going and only one seemed to know why. “I’m
only going,” she said, “to get the Beatles’ autographs.”
“I hear,” one of the girls said, “that there will be over
two hundred guests.”
“Oh, no,” another contradicted. “We’ll be the only girl there – although I
can’t understand why they have invited two girls for each Beatle. There are eight of us, aren’t there?”
The big car swept up to the gates of Bel Air and was stopped
there by a road block.
Five police cars and a group of uniformed officers barred
the way, holding back a tidal wave of screaming girls.
When the limousine halted, the officer peered in, and checked
our names against a list that he held.
Meanwhile, the girls who swarmed around the gates charged
the car like Indian trying to take a stockade.
The officer waved us on, “Have a good time, girl.” He said.
Then, finally, we reached the house where the Beatles were
having a party. Set well back within
spacious grounds, it was guarded by locked and chained gates. Five policemen stood at the gates.
The limousine finally stopped. “Right this way, please,”
someone said and we went in – right into the kitchen!
Bottles, jiggers and mixing equipment filled the kitchen
which had been converted into a well-stocked bar. A bundle of dirty clothes lay in one
corner. Caterers were bustling about
while three or four women were serving cocktails.
We were ushered into a small room and were told to wait
there for our drinks, then, with our glasses in hand, we were invited into the living room.
There, at long last, we were face to face with the Beatles –
face to face with the Beatles and approximately thirty other girls. Ringo, in his black shirt and blue jeans, was
standing at the head of the room, in front of the fireplace, like a Beatle
surveying his ladybugs. John wore
sunglasses (which he kept on the entire time we were there), beige Levis and a
black T-shirt. Paul had on tan Levis and
a red T-shirt. George chose blue
dungarees, a blue sweater-shirt and sandals.
Altogether, our hosts were an informal looking crew.
Chairs were scarce – not nearly enough to go around – but I
finally found one, and, presently, Ringo sat down beside me. He smiled pleasantly.
“Would you hand me those cigarettes on the table?” he
asked. “They are probably mine anyway.”
I passed the cigarettes and tried to think of something clever
to say. All I could think of was, “do
you like it here?”
“Where? You mean
here? In Los Angeles? Well, we haven’t
had a chance to see anything yet. We can’t
go anywhere really.”
Jane joined us just then.
“What would you like to see if you had a chance?” she wanted
to know.
“Disneyland and maybe some of the club on the Strip.” Ringo
told her.
Ringo was pleasant, but I continued to feel uncomfortable at
a party where four young men were expected to entertain three dozen girls, so I
asked him, Do you have parties like this often?”
“No,” Ringo answered.
“This is the first one we’ve ever had like this. Usually we have a few of our friends in, but
we don’t really know anyone here, and we don’t have a chance to meet girls.”
Other girls seemed to feel that the party was peculiar, too,
because one complained, “I feel like I’m in a line-up.”
“Yes, it is rather like a line-up,” Paul agreed. “If I were a girl, I’d hate it, but we like
it. A fast girl would like it – and we
like our horses slow and our women fast.”
It was shortly after this that Paul disappeared from the
party scene. Where and with whom – no one
seemed to know.
Meanwhile, Jane and I were getting better acquainted with
Ringo. “Have you had any trouble,” she
asked, “with fans trying to break into the house?”
“Yes,” he told her. “Yesterday
we caught some girls…”
But he didn’t get to finish the sentence, because a girl
interrupted to ask for a cigarette.
“Ringo,” I begged him, “do you think you could give me our autograph
later for my cousin?”
The Beatle balked.
“American girls,” he announced, “are the only girls in the
world who ask for autographs at a party!”
I had definitely been put in my place! Ringo softened a little, though, and added, “I’ll
do it for you later.”
Our conversation ended then, because that’s when the three girls
came up, grabbed him and insisted that he dance. He clowned around for a few minutes and
then began, quite seriously to dance with
all three at once.
George replaced Ringo in the vacant seat, so Jane and I
asked him for his autograph. “I’ll tell
you what,” he compromised, “you look for a man named Malcolm and ask him to
give you a picture of us that we have already signed.”
Jane had brought a small camera to the party, but, because
of the difficulty over autographs, she’d been afraid to use it. “I’ll ask one of the Beatles to pose,” I told
her, “and if he agrees, I’ll bring him to you.”
Rather surprisingly, when I ran into Ringo and asked if we
could take his picture, he was perfectly agreeable. He posed with Jane while I
snapped the shutter. Then I asked John
to pose, and he said, “Fine.”
However, after Jane had taken a picture of John and me, he
seemed doubtful. “I hope,” he said, “that
this isn’t for ‘Confidential.’”
I thanked him and assured him that the pictures were just
for Jane and me, just for our personal photograph albums.
A little later we took more pictures of Ringo, each time
with his consent.
The Beatles didn’t seem to be afraid of Jane’s camera, but
it turned out that someone was. Her
flash attracted the attention of an agency representative who was quite disturbed. “Whose (sic)
taking those pictures?” he demanded. “You’re
not going to sell the, are you? You
know, they are very valuable.”
Jane and I told him the same thing we’d told the Beatles,
that we were taking them for our personal albums, that we would be willing to
sign an agreement not to sell them. We
even offered to turn over the undeveloped film to the agent so he could keep
the negatives if, only, he’d give us some prints. “Well,” he said, “I guess it’s all
right. It’s not necessary for you to
sign anything.” But he seemed doubtful.
Except for the small furor caused by the flash bulbs, the
strange party dragged on tediously. Girls
talked with girls – who else? And wondered when they were going home. “Girls” isn’t exactly the right word, either,
because many of the guests were mature women, much older than typical Beatle
fans.
Since the party was definitely a drag, although the three
Beatles still in evidence were quite pleasant, I stepped outside to look at the
grounds and get some air.
To my surprise, I saw Beatle George sitting in a limousine
fumbling with the controls.
“Hi,” I said. “Are
you about to go some place?”
“Yes,” George told me.
“I’m going for a drive. Would you
like to come along?”
And I climbed into the front seat beside him. George continued to study the dash board,
slightly frowning. Tentatively, he
touched first one control and then another.
Obviously, he wasn’t sure just how to start and American automobile.
While he was peering at the dials, knobs and switches, an
agency man came streaking out of the house, hurrying toward us. “Hey” he called, “where are you going? Let me get a driver for you.”
“You mean,” George asked, “I can’t drive? I want to drive
myself. I like automobiles.”
“You can drive,” the agent told him, “but I want to send a
driver along so that you’ll find your way back.”
He shot into the house and came back out with another young
man. He got into the back.
As we slipped down the hill along the heavily guarded roads,
the agency man asked Beatle George, “Have you ever driven in this country
before?”
“Yes,” George told him.
“I went for a drive in San Francisco.”
As we approached the main gate to Bel Air, I saw that the
crowd there was a little larger than it had been when we came in.
With a concerted shout, it surged toward us. I was frightened, because I’d never been in a
situation like that before.
George was calm, though and pulled away as fast as he could
without hurting anybody.
We drove down to Wilshire Boulevard and then toward
town. George was interested in the new,
tall apartment buildings on Wilshire and said that the English are beginning to
put up the same kind. He asked the name
of the most expensive American-made car, and when he was told how much a
Cadillac can cost, he was amazed. He
said that he drives an XKE and that John recently bought a Rolls-Royce.
After we’d driven on Wilshire for a few minutes, George
asked how to get to the Sunset Strip, so we directed him there.
He turned the dial of the car radio to a Los Angles statin
that was broadcasting a “Salute to the Beatles,” playing nothing but Beatle
records, and when the announcer interrupted the music to say that the Beatles
were in complete hiding in Los Angeles, that nobody knew where they were,
George laughed.
A few minutes later, he said, “I think we can go home now”
George helped me out of the car and escorted me into the
house, and after that, I never saw him again.
Meanwhile, Jane had had her troubles. In fact, as soon as I stepped back into that
house, I realized that the entire atmosphere had changed while I was out for a
drive. Before I left, the party had been
strange, almost kookie, but hospitable; now, it was almost hostile. I didn’t feel at all welcome.
Jane pulled me aside quickly and told me what had happened.
“I saw Beatle John talking with three girls,’ she said, “so
I asked one of the girls if she’d like to have her picture taken with him. Since he’d posed before, I didn’t think he’d
mind at all. Naturally, the girl said
she’d like the picture, so I snapped it without asking John’s permission
again. I put my camera b ack into my
purse and was walking into the dining room when I heard a shout behind me. Beatle John was positively screeching! “Where’s
that camera? “he was asking while he rummaged through some jackets on a chair.
“Then he saw me walking toward the kitchen with my purse in
my hand. He ran after me, grabbed the
purse, opened it and snatched out the camera.
‘Please don’t destroy the film!’ I begged him! ‘I have some other pictures on that roll that
I took somewhere else, pictures that I may not be able to get again, and I’d
like to save those at least. Please give
the film to your agent, and he can give me any prints he wants me to have.’”
“But John didn’t listen.
Instead, he ran out of the room with the camera. I begged one of the agency men to try to save
the film and send me some prints and he said he’d try. I believe he really did try, but it didn’t do
any good. He returned finally dangling
the broken cartridge and the exposed film.
Then John came back to say he was sorry.”
“I’m very sorry about what happened,” he said, “but I didn’t
know what you were going to do with those pictures.”
“I told you,” I reminded him, “that I only wanted them for
my own album.” “Then a girl I didn’t know broke into the conversation saying
something to the effect that I didn’t have any respect for a person’s privacy,
and John, to my surprise, defended me.”
“The Beatles,” he said, “belong to the public.”
“Then Beatle John told his agent, ‘See that she gets a new
camera.’”
“I told the agent that I didn’t know for sure that mine was
broken, but he said, “That doesn’t matter.
Go get another one, any kind you want and send the bill to the address I’m
going to give you!”
A few minutes later, agency representatives began to ask
girls if they weren’t ready to leave. “We
have to get these girls out of here.”
Jane heard one of them say.
And that’s how it was when I got back. Needless to say, Jane and I left immediately.
The next day I heard that after we were hustled out some
more people arrived and that the party lasted until 4:00a.m. when Beatle Ringo
wound things up by learning to sing, “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” Beatle Paul even reappeared.
Since the party, everybody has been asking, “Now that you’ve
met the Beatles what do you think they are really like? Are you a Beatle fan?”
We’ve thought a lot about it, and to tell you the truth, our
answer to both questions is, “We are not quite sure.”
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