A Hard Day's Night

Part 1 - Background and Production

In 1962, the Beatles released their first single in Britain. It was called ‘Love Me Do’ and, although it only reached number 17 in the 'Record Retailer' charts, its modest success heralded a major break in a pop tradition that had previously been almost exclusively dominated by American and British balladeers and London-based groups. By 1963 teenage ‘Beatlemania’ (a phrase originally coined by the Daily Mirror1) had become widespread in Britain, and by the end of the year the Beatles had produced Britain's first million-selling album (‘With the Beatles’) and three enormously successful number one singles. Although British artistes had not previously achieved any significant success in the US, by 2 March 1964 - the first day of shooting for A Hard Day's Night - the group had also ‘conquered’ America, within a month occupying all top five positions in the Billboard charts.

The appearance of the first Beatles film came, in retrospect, as little surprise. Since the arrival of such British pop stars as Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard in the late fifties, the pop musical had become commonplace in British cinema. After the success of the American-made Bill Haley vehicle, Rock Around the Clock, in 1956, British producers had been keen to capitalize on the increasingly ‘disposable’ income of the emerging teenage market, creating a spate of pop star vehicles such as The Tommy Steele Story (1957), The Duke Wore Jeans (1958) and Expresso Bongo (1959). However, despite a minority of more generously budgeted and professionally produced Cliff Richard films in the early sixties, most pop musicals were made as low budget, exploitative ‘quickies’ intended to capitalize on the rock and roll 'craze' by generating maximum profits for the lowest possible investment.2 Although by 1964 it was becoming clear that rock and roll was an increasingly bankable phenomenon, the production history of A Hard Day's Night reeks of the same exploitative approach.

Although shooting for the film began in March 1964, its preparation commenced some six months earlier, in October 1963, when Beatles manager Brian Epstein met with the independent American producer, Walter Shenson, who had been appointed by United Artists’ European production head, George H. Ornstein. At this point in their career, the Beatles, although an enormous phenomenon in Britain, had yet fully to establish themselves within the American market. The group had not yet attained the superstar status which followed their groundbreaking television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964.3 So the project was initially envisaged by the American-owned company as little more than another low-budget exploitation picture which would capitalize on the group's fleeting success with the teenage market and, most importantly, provide its record label with a lucrative tie-in soundtrack album.4 Indeed, as Shenson later revealed, the company was only interested in making a Beatles film 'for the express purpose of having a soundtrack album', and he was given no other guidelines apart from an instruction to make a film with 'enough new songs by the Beatles for a new album.’5

For their part, the Beatles were initially sceptical about appearing in pop musicals, and not without reason. After all, not only did they lack any formal acting experience, they had also seen their former hero, Elvis Presley, throw his ‘beautiful image as a pop superman clean out of the window’6 by forsaking his more obvious talents to undertake a career in movies. Worse, they were unimpressed by the flimsy, contrived B-movie quality of British pop films, and felt that theirs would be no different. As Lennon said to Epstein prior to shooting, ‘We don't fancy being Bill Haley and the Bellhops, Brian. We're not going to walk in and out of endless studios bumping into Helen Shapiro and Mark Wynter and saying “Hi there” to Alan Freeman.’7 More importantly, things were going extraordinarily well as they were, so why put their heads on the chopping block by interacting with a world of which they knew nothing? Did they really need to risk making fools of themselves and destroying their hitherto impeccable track record?

Because of their initial lack of confidence in the film's profitability, United Artists' budget for A Hard Day's Night was set at a modest £200,000, with the Beatles receiving £20,000, plus 7% per cent of the profits.8 According to former press officer Tony Barrow, United Artists had expected to pay up to three times this percentage, but because of their initial scepticism over the film's success, they 'weren't particularly overjoyed at their good fortune'.9 Having drawn up the agreement, and arranged for the group to write and record six new songs for the soundtrack, Shenson had to decide what kind of film to make. On meeting the Beatles, he had tentatively decided that the film should be a musical comedy and, with their agreement, hired American ex-patriate Richard Lester as director.

In many ways, Lester was an obvious choice both for the Beatles and for Shenson. He had already worked with Shenson on the comedy The Mouse on the Moon (1963), and as a former musician and director of the trad boom musical, It's Trad Dad (1962), was well attuned to contemporary pop sensibilities. Indeed, Lester had heard the Beatles' music some time before they achieved mass popularity, on a live bootleg tape from the Cavern Club which he had heard through friends working at ABC studios, near Manchester. More importantly for the Beatles, he had worked with their favourite comedians, the Goons, on a number of television and film projects. The Beatles greatly admired the surreal and anarchic humour of the Goons, and in the BBC series on sixties British cinema, Hollywood UK, Shenson revealed that the main reason the Beatles had accepted Lester as the film's director was that he had worked with the comedy group on various projects. Their most notable film collaboration was The Running, Jumping, and Standing Still Film (1959), an eleven-minute short which essentially joined one of Peter Sellers' home movies with semi-improvised footage shot by Lester in less than one and a half days.10 As McCartney later commented on the Beatles Anthology documentaries, ‘I don’t know if it’s that funny now, but it was very funny then.’

Having hired the director, Shenson needed a screenwriter. Although a number of screenplays were submitted for the project, none was considered appropriate. At the suggestion of Lester, Shenson hired Alun Owen, a scriptwriter whose previous television credits included Z Cars and No Trams to Lime Street. Like Lester, Owen was well suited to both the film-makers and its stars. He had already worked with Lester on the comedy pilot ‘Dick Lester Show’, and was, in the words of Alexander Walker, already a ‘persona grata with the Beatles’,11 having had a similar upbringing in Merseyside. As Joe McGrath, who contributed some script ideas to the film, remembers, ‘He knew where those boys were, as they say in America, coming from.’12 Shenson briefed Owen that the script should be an ‘exaggerated “day in the life”’13 of the group and on 7 November 1963 sent Owen to Dublin to observe the Beatles' chaotic touring routine. By spring 1964 Owen's script was complete and the Beatles, on their triumphant return from America, were the most famous entertainers on earth. However, this did not affect the film's production schedule or budget, and despite the fact that the group's enormous bankability could easily have justified far greater production costs, it was decided by all parties not to drastically alter any existing agreements. However, a three-picture agreement was drawn up between United Artists and Epstein (with increasingly lucrative terms for the Beatles), and the group's profit percentage was raised. According to Lester, there was no need to increase the production budget, since they ‘had the money enough' to make the kind of film they had agreed upon. That was the price agreed and that was it.’14

On 25 February, just two days after their return from America (and just six days before the start of shooting), the Beatles returned to Abbey Road to begin recording the songs which would comprise the soundtrack of the film: ‘Can't Buy Me Love’, ‘Tell Me Why’, ‘If I Fell’, ‘You Can't Do That’, ‘I Should Have Known Better’, ‘I’m Happy Just to Dance with You’, and ‘And I Love Her’. However, there were some changes made to this line up. ‘You Can't Do That’ was dropped from the film, and the opening title song, ‘A Hard Day's Night,’ was recorded some weeks later, in April, shortly before the completion of shooting. This song was added because the film lacked an original title and on hearing the phrase (initially a ‘Ringoism’) in a conversation with Lennon, Shenson decided that it perfectly captured the film's ‘feel’ and immediately instructed Lennon and McCartney to write the film's title song around it. Although this was the first time the group had been asked to write in a lyrically contrived manner (Shenson had given no lyrical or thematic guidelines for the other songs on the soundtrack), Lennon wrote the song in one evening and played it to the producer the following day.

In keeping with the film’s modest budget, the production schedule was extremely tight, with shooting taking place at various London locations and at Twickenham studios over an eight-week period. The decision to shoot at real locations created nightmarish logistical problems for Denis O’Dell, the film's associate producer. Having arranged for British Railways to provide a special route for the Beatles' train, O'Dell discovered that information would leak out to fans who would then attempt to besiege the train. As he remembers, ‘Kids would be jumping in front of the bloody train, so everyday we would change the route because we couldn’t get the Beatles on the train, never mind get to shoot.’15 For the Beatles, the speed of the shoot created a back-breaking workload. Whilst shooting the film they also had to keep abreast of a number of other commitments, including completing the soundtrack album, attending a number of awards ceremonies, and making several appearances on British television. As Mark Lewisohn's Complete Beatles Chronicle testifies, March to April 1964 was possibly the most chaotic period of the Beatles' career, the group sometimes moving from film locations and studios to television or recording studios in a single day.16 Moreover, so tight was the Beatles' schedule that, at one point, (23 April) Lester was forced to shoot parts of a group sequence without Lennon, who was otherwise engaged at a literary luncheon.

Continued... A Hard Day's Night: Part two

© Bob Neaverson 1997 - 2008

Nothing fixes a hard days night like some online casino roulette at GamblingCity.net. Learn how to win at roulette with articles on roulette probability, roulette betting strategies, and all sorts of great roulette tricks. Visit GamblingCity.net today!