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During their all too short career, The Beatles made four motion pictures, were featured in a Saturday morning cartoon show and were the subjects of two documemtary films.

Of the films and documentaries, I'm only going to mention "A Hard Days Night," "HELP," and "Yellow Submarine"

I exclude the film "Let It Be" because it essentially chronicles the breakup of the band and in my opinion, it really is not that great a film. I wish that I had more information regarding the documentary "Beatles Around the World" or "Around the World with The Beatles" I saw it once when I was a child, and really don't recall much about it except that there was coverage of the 1964 tour that had Jimmy Nicol filling in for Ringo (who was hospitalised with tonsilitis) and there was also the Shakespare bit that all four Beatles participated in.


Click Here "at the movies" to see some selected scenes from the above mentioned films

Here is some interesting trivia regarding each of the movies I listed:
"A Hard Day's Night"

"here's a list of some of the proposed titles for the movie: "Beatlemania," "The Beatles Film," George suggested,"It's a Daft, Daft, Daft, Daft World," and Paul chipped in with,"Oh, What A Lovely Wart." All were rejected.

"The Beatles still had not convinced the money men in the States of their staying power, and United Artists wanted the movie to be as cheap as possible. Shooting the film in black and white, which was against the producer's original wishes, was one way they cut corners.

"foreign distributors fond the near-nonsensical title difficult to translate, and came up with titles like Tutti per Uno, Italian for "all for one," or Quatre Garcons dans le Vent, French for "four boys in the Wind." In Germany, it was released as "Yeah Yeah Yeah die Beatles," and in the Netherlands as Yeah Yeah Yeah Daar de Beatles.

"The movie earned 5.8 million dollars during the first six weeks of its release. not a bad return on a $500,000 investment."


"HELP"


"in one scene, The Beatles sing Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" to calm a tiger. Off camera, was a trainer with a rifle at ready."

"although not as well-reviewed as A Hard Day's Night,HELP won first prize at the International Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro, where it was the official British entry, and the Daily Express compared the band to the Marx Brothers.
"Yellow Submarine"

"thinking that an animated feature would satisfy their contract, The Beatles reluctantly agreed to "Yellow Submarine",originally conceived by Al Brodax.

Erich Segal, a professor of Greek and Latin at Yale University, was one of several scriptwriters for the project. Segal went on to write the bestselling romance novels, "Love Story" and "Eric's Story"



An interesting footnote: There were two post-breakup productions featuring The Beatles as central figures. One was a made for television movie, the other a Broadway Stage production.

"THE BIRTH OF THE BEATLES: Feature film produced for television in 1979. The film dramatisation chronicles the group's formation and rise to fame. Pete Best was a special consultant to Dick Clark, the producer. The Beatles sued for forty million dollars to prevent the airing of the movie but to no avail.

"BEATLEMANIA:" Theatre production which attempted to produce a musical simulation of The Beatles. The musical opened on Broadway in 1977 for a limited engagement, but due to its huge success its run continued for three years. The producers, Leiber and Krebs, were sued by The Beatles in 1979 in protest over ths unauthorised production. The production has spawned many offshoot touring companies billing themselves, under different names, as Beatlemania Live.


Aborted Film Projects

Okay, so you thought "A Hard Day's Night," "HELP," "Yellow Submarine," "Let It Be," and "Magical Mystery Tour" were the only film projects the Beatles were offered. Guess again Popcorn Boy.

Here for your viewing pleasure are the"Beatles Movies that never were:"

The Yellow Teddybears "in 1963, before "A Hard Day's Night,"The Beatles were offered a cameo role in a low-budget, Briish exploitation flick called The Yellow Teddybears (aka Gutter Girls and The Thrill Seekers).
This turkey, which was about a bunch of teenage girls who would wear a teddy bear pin on their blouses to boast to the world that they had slept with a guy.
The Beatles turned this down because they were told they'd either have to perform songs written by someone else, or have their copyrighted by the film's production company.

A Talent for Loving "In ealy 1965, around when HELP! was going into production, it was announced that The Beatles' third movie would be a gun-totin' Western entitled A Talent for Loving. It would start shooting the following year and be based on a true-life, 1,400-mile horse race that took place between the Rio Grande and Mexico City in 1871. The winner's prize was a wealthy and glamourous girl.

Richard Condon, who was adapting the script from his own novel, envisioned The Beatles as a bunch of pioneering Liverpudlians who had traveled west. For reasons that were never made perfectly clear, however, The Beatles withdrew from the project. A Talent for Loving was released in 1969, with leads Richard Widmark, Topol, Caesar Romero, and Genevieve Page.

Lord of the Rings During the mid-1960's, John Lennon thought it would be a good idea for The Beatles to purchase the rights to J. R. R. Tolkien's epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, casting himself in the most attention-getting role! For those familiar with the book, John wanted the part of Gollum, while Paul would play Frodo Baggins, George would portray Gandalf, and Ringo would be Sam Merryweather.

Needless to say, this idea didn't appeal to the others, and so when the rights to the book weren't even attainable, the project was conveniently forgotten. The book was eventually made into an animated movie by director Ralph Bakshi (Fritz the Cat) and released in 1979.

The Three Muskteers The Three Musketeers had already been filmed in 1935, 1939, and 1948 when the Beatles considered starring in another remake of Alexander Dumas' classic novel. Done properly, this actually could have been a good vehicle for them, yet the Fabs ultimately felt they just weren't suited to the characters of the Musketeers and D'Artagnan.

It isn't clear who suggesed this idea or who would have directed the film, yet it's interesting to note that when The Three Musketeers next reached the big screen in 1974, Dick Lester was at the helm. He also directed The Four Musketeers(1974) and Return of the Musketeers(1989).

Shades of a Personality By 1966, producer Walter Shenson was desperately searching for a Beatles movie vehicle that would mark a significant departure from A Hard Day's Night and HELP! At the end of the year, Shenson announced that Owen Holder was working on a script for what was being initially being referred to as "Beatles 3." By June 1967 this had evolved into Shades of a Personality, to be shot in Malaga, Spain, and directed by the award-winning maker of Blow-up, Michaelangelo Antonini. The story would concern a man (John) who suffers from a three-way split personality. Each of these personalities (portrayed by Paul, George, and Ringo) would emerge in separate sub-plots.

An interesting idea, but with the release of the Sgt. Pepper album, The Beatles were soon moving on to new projects, one of which was the Magical Mystery Tour TV movie. Shades of a Personality was quickly dropped from the schedule.

Up Against It In January 1967, while the script for Shades of a Personality was still in development, Walter Shenson also approached English playwright Joe Orton (Loot) about writing a screenplay for The Beatles. Orton's darkly humourous writing style appealed to The Beatles. Walter Shenson therefore paid him an advance of $12,000 to come up with something.

Unbeknownst to Shenson and the Fab Four, Orton adapted one of his early novels, The Silver Bucket, and added elements of another that would later be published as Head To Toe. The result was Up Against It, and, to quote an entry from Orton's own diary, "with its political assassination, guerrilla warfare, and transvestitsm, it might have been designed with The Beatles in mind!"

Orton completed the script for Up Against It in late February. In early April he received it back from Brian Epsteins office without even an explanation. On August 9, 1967, 18 days before Brian's death, Joe Orton was murdered by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell. He was just 34.

As you can see, the most notable film projects The Beatles rejeced ranged from the inane to the insane, the enticing to the unexciting. Beyond that there's no way of knowing how any of them would have turned out, but one thing's for certain: They would have been hard-pressed to match--let alone improve on--A Hard Day's Night


I found this really impressive Beatles tribute band and I would really like to share some information about them with you. To find out more about this group "Click Here" 1964 the tribute

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