All Aboard the Beatles Special (1964)

 

All Aboard the Beatles Special

Disc Weekly 

March 7, 1964

    All this week, the Beatles have been spending around 11 hours each day in a sealed five-coach special train supplied by British Railways at a reported cost of £600 a day for the opening sequence of their new film for United Artists.

     The train has been speeding from Paddington Station to Minehead and is fully equipped with technical equipment, cameras, film crew, makeup coach, restaurant car, and bar. To celebrate the first day of shooting, producer Walter Shenson presented the Beatles with a big bottle of champagne. The Beatles, in turn, gave a glass to the members of the Film Unit, who numbered about 50!

     "Everything has been laid on by the film company to make the Beatles' filming as comfortable as possible, "says publicity director Tony Howard, "excellent menus have been prepared by the chefs on the train, and on Monday, they were offered a variety choice of food, including roast pork and apple sauce, soup, ice cream, Melba, cheese and coffee."

     The boys are real professionals and have taken their film directions in a willing and easy-going manner. They arrived at Paddington Station at 8am, and the filming on the train runs right through 7pm.  Special suits have been made for the Beatles by the film company. And these train shots will give a general picture of how they travel to and from their engagements.

     During some of the sequences, fans will see two girls on the train who realize that they are traveling with the Beatles and who make eyes at them.

     The Beatles will get a break on Saturday and Sunday, as there is no filming on those days, but resume work before the cameras on Monday. At press time, it was not set whether it would be in a studio or on location, but it is expected that all the train shots will be finished by tomorrow, Friday. 

Written by Walter Shenson

    I want to make the Beatles picture as colourful as possible, but that's easy, as the boys are colourful characters themselves. And one thing I do know is that if the film is successful in England, then the rest of the world should take care of itself.

    As for their music, well, that is international. But I would still love to have a movie camera and sound apparatus on hand when the Beatles see themselves dubbed in Italian. 

    The film will be shot in black and white. Why not color? Because the Beatles are pretty well black-and-white characters, seamless. We don't intend to play up one of the boys more than any other. We find that in real life, they tend to feed each other and work as a team. 

    Our film is definitely not a musical. If it were, there would be about 14 numbers in it, but since there are only six and no other music groups, and all the songs have been written by John and Paul. 

    Will we be filming in Liverpool? Quite possibly, but our headquarters will be a studio in London. Whether we shoot in film studios one day or on location depends on the weather, and that's even more unpredictable than the Beatles.

     Since I decided to make this film, I've been asked again and again if I think the boys can really act. Well, let me tell you that when it comes to delivering dialogue, the boys are naturals, especially making up their own. 

    They're great at handling the press, as they proved in America, and they're only too good at sending up people, as I found out, to my cost. So it is important that we keep their own identity in the film.

     There's this quality, of course, that has contributed to their success. They're not conformists, a bit intervariant. They speak to the fans in their own language, as it were, but their humour also appeals to adults. They're nice looking kids too, and well dressed. And these are big assets. 

    I think they are going to make a great film, and just as they did when they appeared on the Royal Show at the Palladium, they're going to surprise a lot of people with their talent. 

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.

Ringo is the Shyest (1964)

 

Reporter Brian Gibson interviews John on the set of A Hard Days' Night 

Ringo is the Shyest

By Brian Gibson

The Australian Woman's Weekly 

May 27, 1964

What are they really like?  How do the Beatles view their success, their fans and their fantastic rags to riches story? In the London theater where they were filming the finale to a movie about themselves, I had an exclusive interview with the legendary lads .

    "Australia eh?" said John Lennon, with one of his mock serious expressions, "Pull up a kangaroo and sit down. "  I'd been prepared for the special brand of Beatle humor that buzzes between the famous Four. It stems from John, their acknowledged spokesman, who enjoys Goon type humor, often spiced with penetrating observations.

    Wearing a neatly cut suit and dark tie, John sat beside me in a theater seat. Older than the others, he is 23. He fixes you with his steady gaze and is certainly the most outspoken of them. His face is friendly but distinguished. You get the impression he would have made a good Roman senator. 

    His conversation is witty, sparkles with obscure jokes, and is always interesting. The voice is the nasal Liverpudlian that commands attention. George is sitting in front of us in the theater. He has the same kind of accent, but is a more deliberate speaker than John. Paul, who was buzzing around in the background, is quick-witted and an intent listener. Ringo wasn't there. On the previous occasion I had met him, he was alert but difficult to communicate with. Everyone says he is the shyest of the four. 

    "You know," said John, "When they told us how well our discs were going in Australia, we could hardly believe it. Naturally, we're looking forward to the visit. I'm particularly looking forward to seeing some relatives in New Zealand, because we've never met." 

    Although their Australian visit is going to call for strict security precautions, they hope to do some surfing. "We went water skiing in Florida and had a marvelous time," said, John, "so I'm hoping we'll get the chance to go out on the Aussie beaches. Everyone says they're great."

     George turned around and asked that they use pounds, shillings and pence in Australia. "Of course, they do," replied John.  "I'm glad," said George, "We didn't get on well with dollars and cents in America."

     The kind of money the Beatles are currently earning defies calculation. Besides record sales and royalties from the hits that John and Paul write, there are fantastic fees from television and concert work, plus royalties from articles bearing their name. In America alone, they hope to make £5 million this year from trade concessions. It's an estimate that, after paying heavy tax, each of them, in the first year, banked more than £90,000. "We honestly don't know how much we're making," said John. "It all goes to accountants who put it into various funds and stocks for our old age. We get a weekly allowance each, but we seldom spend it. What chance do we get to go out?"

     The restrictions that fame imposes have become the Beatles' biggest problem. Going out is virtually impossible, and during filming in London, all meals were sent into the theater. "If we went out, the fans would tear us apart," said John. "Occasionally, one of us will slip out for ciggies or something like that. It's a risk, but you'll be surprised at how many people think we travel around as a foursome, that we never go out on our own. Paul went up to Liverpool the other day on his own and wasn't recognized. That kind of thing doesn't happen often. "

    Wherever their presence is announced, vast crowds of teenagers form, squealing with delight when they glimpse their idols. At the theater where I met the Beatles, a heavy police guard had been mounted on every door. But it didn't stop a band of overenthusiastic fans from smashing some windows and coming into the theater. It took theater staff two hours to find them all and held up filming. Said John, "Some of them are too rowdy. That's why we don't see a lot of the fans these days; they want to tear at your clothes and hair. It's no joke to have 1000 screaming kids after you. On the other hand, there are the ones who are sensible about it. I live in Earl's Court, and every day there's a crowd who gather when I come out or go in. They're always well-behaved. I usually stop for a chat and sign autographs."

     The Beatles' film has the boys playing themselves in a story that sets out to show a couple of typical days in their lives. The American producer Walter Shenson told me, "This was the only formula that fitted what we had in mind. The Beatles are very much individuals, and we're trying to show this in the picture. It's in black and white because they're really black and white people. There are naturals in front of the camera."

     But the pace is grueling. As Paul pointed out, "It's a very tiring job this filming. You have to get up early, and there's a lot of hanging around. Once you're working, it's fine, but we don't like the waiting around ."

    Ringo wasn't on hand to give his observation. "He's not on call today," said George, "so I expect he'll be sleeping. Want me to ring him and say you'd like to speak to him?"  John laughed. "He wouldn't bother to get up anyway. He loves his rest," he said. "We all do. Honestly, we work the maddest hours ever. It's a crazy life, but great fun."

    Success has changed the Beatles very little. When I first met them over a year ago, they were hoping to make the grade and were a little unsure of their chances. Today, they exude confidence and have a polished air that success brings, yet they're still friendly and warm. The technicians on the set laughed and joked with them and found them great to work with. "No, we haven't changed really," said John. "What success really does for you is give you a feeling of confidence in yourself. It's an indescribable feeling, but once you've had it, you never want it to stop. You see, we never set out to do it this way, and we certainly never dreamed it would end up as big as this. It all just happened, and we're lucky."

     One of John Lennon's biggest problems is created by the fact that he's married. His wife, Cynthia, is kept hidden behind a tight veil of security, and Lennon has hitherinto refuse to even mention her name, but he told me, "I like to keep my work and my private life separate, which is why I keep Cynthia out of the picture. I took her to America because I thought that a trip like that comes once in a lifetime, and she deserved it. I dearly love to take her to Australia, but the schedule looks too grueling."

     When the Beatles return from Australia, they will embark on television and concert appearances in America and a British tour. Walter Shenson wants them for another film and is already searching for a subject. 

    How long can they last? Is the question everyone asked. John is adamant on that point, "We won't leave the scene suddenly from one day to another, but we may fade, and of course, we will all be sad when that happens, but I think by then we'll have put back enough money. We won't starve. I can tell you."

The Magnificent Seven

 

February 22, 1965

The long wait

 

March 25, 1964 

It's been a hard day's stand

Union Break

A little Help from Walter