Peter Viney's Blog

A Hard Day’s Night

1964

The original poster

Directed by Richard Lester
Screenplay by Alun Owen
Cinematography by Gilbert Taylor
Produced by Walter Shenson

CAST
John Lennon – John
Paul McCartney – Paul
George Harrison – George
Ringo Starr – Ringo

with
Wilfred Brambell- grandfather
Norman Rossington – Norm
John Junkin -Shake
Victor Spinetti- TV Director
Anna Quayle- Millie
Deryck Guyler – Police sergeant
Richard Vernon – Man on train
Lionel Blair- TV choreographer
David Janson – Young Boy
Kenneth Haigh- TV executive

Uncredited brief appearances include Isla Blair, Patti Boyd, Brian Epstein, Mal Evans, Phil Collins, Susan Hampshire, Linda Lewis, Derek Nimmo, Charlotte Rampling.

The more familiar poster.

The 60s retrospective series.
Release date: July 1964 UK; August 1964 USA

I’ve reviewed so many Swinging London 60s films that I have to excuse leaving the best-known one so late. I was reluctant to do it because so much has been written on the film, that it’s impossible to have an overview (or new view) of comments. It has the longest list of “trivia” on Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) that I have ever seen.  Perhaps cultural phenomenon is as good a description as ‘film.’

The Beatles and me

I was won over totally the first time I saw The Beatles perform  Love Me Do on TV.  I played the Please Please Me album till it wore out, and then did the same with With The Beatles. I saw them three times in Bournemouth. The first time they did two shows a night for a week at The Gaumont cinema in the summer of 1963 and you could actually hear them. The cover picture of With The Beatles was taken at the Palace Court Hotel, next to the Gaumont. I queued overnight to see them at the Winter Gardens in November 1963, and I didn’t hear a thing (and the ticket cost me 62p!), nor in 1964, but the screaming on that 1963 show is used on The Byrds So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star. It comes from a TV news piece.

My ticket

I bought every single up to Can’t Buy Me Love and the Long Tall Sally EP. I didn’t buy A Hard Day’s Night, nor Beatles For Sale nor Help albums on release, though I bought the Hard Days Night EP (Part One).  From Rubber Soul on, I bought every album as it was released. I got the others later, certainly by 1971. I actively disliked Can’t Buy Me Love and I still skip it on compilations. That transition from Yeah, Yeah, Yeah to No, No, No was too predictable. Something was happening between me and The Beatles by 1964. Perhaps it was the normal rock snob reaction when your favourites become too popular. It wasn’t just me though. At teen parties (I was just seventeen, you know what I mean?) the girls were clamouring to play The Beatles.  The boys had already switched allegiance to The Rolling Stones … their first album was April 1964. It was a gender divide, just as Cliff Richard v Elvis had been a gender divide. The young girls went for cute and cuddly. The boys kept an eye out for those more adventurous girls who preferred Elvis and The Rolling Stones … and within The Beatles, those girls were all for John Lennon.

In retrospect, we were all in teen bands. In the UK it was too cold to practise in our much smaller garages, but they were ‘garage bands’ in the US sense. We loved the Stones because we could try to play all those R&B songs. For a young bass player, they’re not hard. We used to call Chuck Berry songs ‘Tune 1’ and Bo Diddley songs ‘Tune 2’ and a bass guitarist could pretty much get away with that. We’d learned Twist & Shout, Money, Roll Over Beethoven from The Beatles versions, but they were moving fast away from that.  The Beatles melodically were playing stuff we couldn’t play. No chance. Paul McCartney remains the greatest rock bass player, not because it was technically difficult, but because no other bassist would have chosen those notes. Just as Ringo is a truly great drummer, not through fiddly stuff but through perfect choices. Part of the appeal of The Rolling Stones and The Animals was bringing in a democracy of R&B stuff we could actually try to perform.

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Film

I’d be lying if I claimed I could remember where or who with. I suspect it was the lads in the band, because girls our age would have made too much noise. I do remember feeling a sense of personal affront that it was black and white. I didn’t know that was cool or arty. I just thought they’d done a cheap number on The Beatles who fully warranted widescreen technicolour. I was right, as it turns out. United Artists were interested in a legal trick that would allow them to distribute the soundtrack in the USA. The budget was a miserly £150,000, later pushed up to £175,000, and it took $8 million in its first WEEK making it one of the best ever percentage return on investment. Advance orders of the US soundtrack LP covered all the filming costs before the film was released.

While we’re on money, the producer, Walter Shenson, was sent by United Artists to do the deal with Brian Epstein. His instruction was not to be pushed over 25% of the take to The Beatles. He walked in and Epstein announced that he wanted 7.5%. Epstein on marketing and royalties was staggeringly inept. In fact, even United Artists felt guilty and later on upped it to 20%.

The European office of United Artists begged for colour, but the US office was adamant. The budget wouldn’t stretch to colour. The black and white came to be a British Swinging 60s signature.

Paul McCartney: It was the only colour it could have been, it would have been crap in colour. They gave us colour for Help! and it wasn’t anywhere near as good a film.
Quoted in Barry Miles: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now

On the stupidity of the American office, when they saw it, they asked if it could be re-dubbed in Mid-Atlantic accents. Paul McCartney responded:

Paul McCartney: Look, if we can understand a fucking cowboy talking Texan, they can understand us talking Liverpool.”
IMDB Trivia

The characters

It would not be fair to claim The Beatles are “themselves.” The credits read “John Lennon – John” etc. rather than “John Lennon – himself.”  Alun Owen went on tour with The Beatles to draft the script … he was at the Bournemouth concert which the ticket above comes from. That cemented their roles. John the sarky, aggressive smart-arse, Paul as cute, bouncy and sensible, George as introverted and shy and Ringo as dim-witted and sad, but lovable. That continues in Help!, Yellow Submarine and Magical Mystery Tour and even the documentary Let It Be indicates a degree of reality in it, but it was consciously simplistic, and the stereotypes dogged the four of them ever after.

Ringo Starr: Alun Owen came on part of a British tour, wrote down the chaos that went on all around us and how we lived, and gave us a caricature of ourselves.’

Each were given a solo spot … John in the bath, George with the advertising executive, Ringo wandering off on his own. Paul’s solo spot, looking for Ringo didn’t work and was cut. Lester was great at ruthless excision … the Blu-ray has the You Can’t Do That studio footage that was also cut. It’s brilliant.

On the balance of songwriting and lead vocals, the film heavily favours John. It happened he wrote more at that time, and the camera favours him … loves him, in fact.

Dick Lester opines that if Macca comes across as least ‘natural’ in the movie, its probably because he was always going to the theatre with Jane Asher and her family, and under this cultural influence, may actually have been trying to do some Proper Acting.
Charles Shaar Murray, Mojo, Beatlemania 1962-1964

The name ‘The Beatles’ is never heard in the film, but it appears on the front of Ringo’s bass drum. That’s the only reference. The Beatles’ surnames do get dropped in. Norm addresses John as ‘Lennon.’ George is mentioned as George Harrison. Grandad is ‘Mr McCartney.’ Ringo’s name appears on an invitation.

Alun Owen and the script

Alun Owen was a Welsh-Liverpudlian. He was known for kitchen sink Northern TV dramas. He’d worked with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop.

Paul McCartney: They called in Alun Owen, who had written No Trams to Lime Street with Billie Whitelaw, which we’d seen on telly and it was like an early Alan Bleasdale or Willy Russell. It was a sort of kitchen sink Liverpool thing … So Alun came around with us and picked up little things like “He’s very clean, isn’t he?” or we would tell him. ‘Oh, we met a guy the other day … ‘ because we actually did meet a guy o the train who said, ‘I fought the war for people like you.’ And it eventually found its way into the film … (Alun) was kind of a street writer, quite exciting, so we knew enough to try and pump him full with every good story we could think of. The more we told him, the more of us he’d get in … we could play it easier, we could identify with it all easier.
Quoted in Barry Miles: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now

Pete Brown and John Lennon both suggested that Owen was Brian Epstein’s choice.

There is some discussion on grotty which the Oxford Dictionary credits with its first use in the film. Alun Owen says on the Blu-Ray Extras that it was Liverpool slang for grotesque, based on a woman called Grotty Jean. However, none of The Beatles admit that they had ever heard it. Paul McCartney reckoned that he simply made it up for the film. BUT …

On the other hand, a friend who lives in Germany adds that it’s North German and commented:

Grotty: if it was indeed heard for the first time in A Hard Day’s Night,
the Fabs might have picked it up in Hamburg, as the same adjective – grottig –
was and is used in everyday German, with precisely the same set of meanings.
‘Grottenschlecht’, which is also current, means ‘really, terribly bad’.

Richard Lester: The script was very cleverly written so that was never a time where any one person had too much to say before someone else said something. They were sound bites. One line gags or a little speech that could be cut away from.

This was pre-planned. They had no idea what The Beatles would be like on film, they were not professional actors and they wanted stuff they could memorize and deliver without lots of learning lines.

John Lennon was less kind in retrospect, but John Lennon was less kind on most things. Over the years I’ve spoken to various musicians who met him in the early days, and the universal opinion was that he was aggressive, violent and verbally cruel.

John Lennon: (Alun Owen) was famous for writing Liverpool dialogue. And we auditioned people to write for us. And they came up with this guy and we knew his work and we said all right, but then he had to come round with us to see what we were like. But he was a bit phoney. He was like a professional Liverpool man … he stayed with us two days and wrote the whole thing based around our characters then: me, witty; Ringo dumb and cute; George this; Paul that. We were a bit infuriated by the glibness of it, the shittyness of the dialogue. And we were always trying to get it more realistic, even with Dick and all that, make the camera work more realistic, but they wouldn’t have it.
The Rolling Stone Interviews, 1970

None of The Beatles stayed to the end of the premiere, and Lennon had left first, but then they would have seen it and needed to escape the crowds.

Richard Lester

Richard Lester: in the first half of the film, all the scenes would be in close confinement and at a certain point they were going to breakout, rip off down a fire escape and escape from their success. Now whatever we did had to lead to that, whatever scenes took place had to lead to that, and that’s why there’s a careful build up. The script that Alun Owen wrote produced that movement towards a series of emotional climaxes.

Richard Lester was American, working in London, and The Beatles were impressed with his connection to The Goon Show and in particular The Running, Jumping, Standing Still Film. He had previous on a pop music exploitation project, It’s Trad Dad in 1962, then a broad British comedy The Mouse on The Moon with all the usual English comedy suspects.

The title

The shooting script was titled ‘The Beatles,’ merely a working title. Towards the end of the six weeks filming, there was a brainstorming session with Shenson, Lester and The Beatles. They remembered something Ringo had said after a gruelling day on tour, ‘It’s been a hard day’s night …’ rather than a hard day’s work.

Paul McCartney: Ringo would do these little malapropisms, he would say things slightly wrong, like people do, but his were always wonderful, very lyrical, Lewis Carroll. Lovely.

They needed a title song for the credits. John volunteered to write it on the evening of 13th April. He came in with it on the 14th, they played it to Walter Shenson the same day and recorded it on the 16th.

What I’m watching now …

The 50th Anniversary blu-ray restoration with the mono soundtrack is available in a new 5.1 mix by Giles Martin. The definitive version of all early Beatles LPs is the mono one, after which they left the studio and someone else did a quick stereo mix for the USA. However, Giles Martin’s expertise at re-mixing The Beatles adds a dimension.

The CAST

Wilfred Brambell (grandad), John, John Junkin (Shake), Norman Rossington (Norm), George.

The first decision was to surround The Beatles with experienced actors. Wilfred Brambell got a sole “Also starring …” credit right below The Beatles. He plays Paul McCartney’s fictional Irish republican grandfather, and throughout he’s the “mixer” the catalyst for trouble. Brambell was already well-known for the part of the rag-and-bone man in Steptoe and Son from 1962. His son constantly refers to him as You dirty old man … which was reversed in the film by references to him as a very clean old man. Brambell wasn’t that old either, just 52 at the time. He was genuinely Irish, not the old Cockney of the TV sitcom. He was something of a dirty old man though, arrested for importuning in a public toilet.

Norman Rossington and John Junkin played their roadies, Norm and Shake, not that they ever seem involved with normal roadie work. Norm has a role sparring with John.

Victor Spinetti was cast as the harassed TV director in a garish sweater. He went on to Help! and Magical Mystery Tour. There’s nothing actors like better than playing the roles of producers and directors. It’s sweet revenge.

Deryck Guyler is the police sergeant.

David Jansen who was in our video comedies A Weekend Away and A Week By The Sea was the young boy. This was just before he joined the TV series The Newcomers (1965-69).

IMDB: The tyre over which Ringo trips in the scene at the river bank had to be thrown again and again, as it kept rolling incorrectly. Finally, after numerous wasted takes, it was offered to young actor David Janson on hand to play the young boy Ringo meets. Janson rolled the tyre correctly on the first try.

I’ve seen David do similar ‘first time right’ scenes with footballs, tripping over,  and with a major jump over a sandcastle.

People were desperate to be extras. Phil Collins was one and narrates the Blu-Ray The Making of … extra.

THE PLOT

That first chord to introduce the title song over the credits is sheer genius.

Travels with Grandad

It doesn’t take that long to sum up. The four are travelling to London by train to take part in a TV show. They’re travelling first class and have brought Paul’s grandfather (Wilfred Brambell) along with them. We set the idea that the old man is a troublemaker.  They encounter a stereotypical middle England chap (I fought the war for the likes of you). Already, we get that feel of a TV documentary with its flashes of surrealism – the four running along the outside of the train.

Patti Boyd centre, with Paul in bowler hat guise.

They also meet some thrilled schoolgirls, one of Patti Boyd’s several appearance which ended up with marrying George in real life. The first time we see them singing I Should Have Known Better is in the guards van, with its cage to secure luggage – the cage is their life.

After a race through the station – the girls really were dangerous – they reach another cage, the luxury hotel. Grandad bribes the room service waiter to lend him his tie and tails, thus enabling grandad can go out to a casino.

No one could do a grimace of a smile like Wilfred Brambell – his old man Steptoe face

The others return and find the waiter in his underwear in the wardrobe.  Norm and Paul set off to find grandad and discover he has run up a staggering bill … £118!!!

Meanwhile back at the hotel, George is having fun with the mirror and shaving foam on Shake’s reflection while John is having a bubble bath. The surreal element resurfaces – John disappears under the bubbles, Shake pulls the bath plug, water drains out, and John  has gone! In 1964 even in their luxury suite a shared bathroom was an expectation.

They’re off to the theatre to rehearse the filmed show, and girls are waiting outside. It’s the right limo, a Vanden Plas Princess. They were huge and not that expensive. It was beloved of funeral directors and wedding car companies. Dylan was filmed in one with John Lennon two years later. I saw The Walker Brothers driver scrape one the length of a brick wall to rescue the band from a stage door – he reversed until they could open the back door into the stage door. It was mangled.

The press are there, so they get asked silly questions and give comic answers.

Lester and Owen wanted to re-create the condescending quality of a reception that had taken place in New York, on the Beatles’ first tour of America, where they found themselves treated like a newly discovered species. Later, in Washington D.C., when someone cut off a lock of Ringo’s hair, the boys were so taken aback they fled the reception. It was part of Lester’s wit to edit several questions and answers so they’re mismatched: when asked if he had any hobbies, John scribbles on a piece of paper, and Paul replies, “No, we’re just good friends.”
Sam Kashner, Vanity Fair 2 July 2014

More examples:

Journalist: What do you call that haircut?
George: Arthur.

Journalist: Are you a mod or a rocker?
Ringo: Um, no, I’m a mocker.

Shake (John Junkin) doing the only bit of roadying as we know it. 

We’re into the rehearsal.

George is off to see an advertising executive, Simon Marshall. He has a girl in the office who he explains is a trendsetter. George is shown some shirts and asked to give his opinion on them. This is the ‘Grotty’ line. The shirts are exactly what wannabe rivals The Dave Clark Five wore on stage.

Simon: Now, you’ll like these. You’ll really “dig” them. They’re “fab,” and all the other pimply hyperboles.
George: I wouldn’t be seen dead in them. They’re dead grotty.
Simon: Grotty? 
George: Yeah, GROTESQUE!
Simon:Make a note of that word and give it to Susan. It’s rather touching, really. Here’s this kid, giving me his utterly valueless opinion, when I know for a fact that within a month, he’ll be suffering from a violent inferiority complex and loss of status because he isn’t wearing one of these nasty things! Of course they’re grotty, you wretched nit! That’s why they were designed! But that’s what you’ll want

Back at the theatre, which was the old Scala a theatre converted into studios for TV broadcasts, an opera production of Die Fledermaus is going on in the next studio. Grandad wanders in. There is a signature style throughout of cutting to the control room with multiple monitors. The director on live TV had feeds from different video cameras and cut between them as the show went out. I’ve seen it done. it’s a great skill. Here, they used six cameras. I suspect it’s faked sometimes here, because the monitors should be showing different angles and close ups. They do in most sequences too, but not all.

And I Love Her

We see them mingling with the opera performers backstage, then a cut to Lionel Blair doing a dance routine, which is a reminder that shows in those days were VARIETY shows. You needed a comedian and some dancers.

John with the dancers

George sings I’m Happy Just To Dance With You.

In the canteen: grandad and Ringo

While John and Paul are showing interest in the dancers, Ringo is in the studio canteen with grandad, who, troublemaker as ever, suggests he getaway for some time out. He wanders along by the river. He meets a young lad (David Janson) and they chat and mess around with a tyre.

The boy (David Jansen) and Ringo

Back at the studio, the TV director is having kittens at the absence of Ringo. The audience is coming in. They had an audience of 350.

Backstage: Norm, John, Paul, The TV Director (Victor Spinetti), Shake.

Ringo is still by the river, now doing a Walter Raleigh act, laying his coat over puddles for a lady to step on. In another surreal moment he puts it over a deep hole and she disappears from view.

The police sergeant (Deryck Guyler) and Ringo

This ends up with Ringo being arrested and taken to the police station. Soon grandad is brought in, arrested too, protesting.

The other lads are racing around the streets looking. So are a horde of policemen. A very funny sequence is a car thief is trying to steal a Humber Hawk car during this, and has to keep stopping as the police go by. He finally succeeds, only to have a policeman jump in and order him to follow the chase.

The lads get back to the theatre just in time.

We finish with a studio sequence of songs. The intercutting with screaming girls in close up was surprisingly innovative at the time. The songs remind you yet again that this was the greatest band in the world and have never been bettered. Grandad has discovered a sub-stage lift and comes into view in the middle.

This is what it’s all about …

They finish with an ascending helicopter escape.

The film remains remarkably innocent. The fact that the Beatles were seen smoking on screen shocked some American viewers … Elvis never smoked on camera. There are some in-jokes. I’m sure John sniffing a coke bottle was one. But otherwise no drugs, no sex. It is joyous. Even when the jokes wear thin, the speed of cutting, the sense of pace and above all the sheer exuberance of the music cuts through.

Pete Brown: By virtue of Lester’s jump cutting, op-art direction, The Beatles were turned into modern-day swinging Marx Brothers … American film critic Andrew Sarris later dubbed a Hard Day’s Night, “The Citizen Kane of juke-box movies.”
Peter Brown & Steven Gaines: The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of The Beatles.

SOUNDTRACKS

The first seven songs are from the film, the rest created the album as an original Beatles LP record. You Can’t Do That was the B-side of Can’t Buy Me Love and for me a superior song. The A-side was begging for the likes of Ella Fitzgerald to cover it. She did. The B-side is a floor-filler for my generation. We all seem to know it.

The Beatles did things differently. I’m discussing British original Parlophone releases, not the abomination compilations put out by Capitol in the USA.

The first album, Please Please Me was conventional, both sides of the first two singles plus a few originals and cover versions. By the time they did With The Beatles there was a new policy. They did not release singles from the album, nor did they put old singles on it. What they did do was an EP All My Loving. Britain was different. My generation had simple mono record players and stereo was for rich middle-aged people. LPs were expensive, much more for time worked to earn them than in America. When I was fifteen in 1962, my summer job paid £2.15 shillings a weeks (2.75 in post 1970 money). An LP cost £1.12s 6d (£1.62). Three days work. So the EP market (10s 6d – 52p) with four tracks was important in Britain. In the rest of Europe, EPs were more popular than singles.

Can’t Buy Me Love / You Can’t Do That was on the LP, but again not on the EPs. 45s, EPs and LPs remained distinct. In the studio sequence they do a full version of She Loves You which had never been on an album (though it was for many years the best-selling record of all time). They didn’t put it on the A Hard Day’s Night LP. Don’t Bother Me from With The Beatles appears earlier. Not on the soundtrack.

A Hard Day’s Night: Dutch single. Reproduced in The Beatles Singles box set 2019

A Hard Day’s Night was issued as a single in July 1964 and was obviously #1.

The London premiere, 6 July 1964

The film was advertised as having 12 Smash Song Hits. OK, seven on the album. Three more in the film.

Tracks from the British LP were issued as two EPs: Extracts from the film, and Extracts from the album (rounding up four of the non-film songs). For record collectors the second is rarer and more valuable.

Extracts from the film EP – the title track is not on there

The rarer EP: Extracts from the album

French EP: 4 Garcons dans le vent. Would that be Patti Boyd doing George’s hair?

The French did two EPs as well. This is the second. Two of the songs are not actually from the film, but are from the album.

United Artists pulled off their trick of releasing the seven soundtrack songs padded out with instrumentals in the USA. Three instrumentals were of songs already there: I Should Have Known Better, And I Love Her and A Hard Day’s Night. Then they added Ringo’s Theme which was the older B-side This Boy. The Beatles weren’t going to include previously recorded songs like She Loves You and Don’t Bother Me in the deal. It was not released in the UK.

US LP soundtrack on United Artists

Instruments

Paul is still inexplicably plucking that Hofner violin bass throughout. Its appeal was that it came left-handed from new if you wanted and the size enabled him to move around. I’ve played one and hated its soft farty tone and the weight just fell wrongly. I am sure Paul’s models were (and still are) highly modified. I’ve seen several used on stage and they always sound muffled. Paul’s never did.

John and George are looking cool with their new Rickenbackers. George has a 12 string and the film influenced Roger McGuinn to go straight out and buy one, thus creating the signature jingle-jangle morning sound of the early Byrds.

RICHARD LESTER
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
The Knack (1965)
Help! (1965)
How I Won The War (1967)
Petulia (1968)

POP EXPLOITATION FILMS

The Young Ones (1962)
Play It Cool (1962)
Summer Holiday (1963)
What A Crazy World (1963)
Live It Up! (1963)
Just For You (1964)
Wonderful Life (1964)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
Gonks Go Beat (1965)
Help! (1965)

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …

A Taste of Honey (1961)
The Young Ones (1962
Some People (1962)
Play It Cool (1962)
Summer Holiday (1963)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
What A Crazy World (1963)
Live It Up! (1963)
Just For You (1964)
The Chalk Garden (1964)
Wonderful Life (1964)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965)
Gonks Go Beat (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Help! (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Nevada Smith (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
Girl On A Motorcycle (1968)
The Bofors Gun (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)
Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
Medium Cool (1969)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970)
Performance (1970)