The Movie That Captured The Joyful Energy And Excitement of ‘Beatlemania’ In The Summer of ‘64
By Doug Draper, a forever Beatles fan
Posted July 19th, 2024 on Niagara At Large
A an image of an original poster for the movie ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
It was sixty years ago this summer – July, 1964 – and since the beginning of that year, when The Beatles first invaded North America, the airwaves were full with one hit song after another from this powerhouse British rock group.
‘Beatlemania’, as they called it, was in full flight and along with the great music, there was all kinds of merchandise, from Beatle wigs and lunch boxes to Beatle posters and cards Like it is with Taylor Swift today, every magazine rack was filled with magazines with The Beatles on the cover.
Now all that the group’s countless millions of fans needed was a movie and in July of that year, their wish came true.
The movie was called ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and it played like a documentary, featuring a high-energy 36 hours on the lives of John, Paul, George and Ringo, preparing for a television performance while they played cat and mouse with screaming fans.
The album cover for the North American soundtrack from the film soared to the top of the best-selling charts
My Uncle Don Draper was a projectionist at a movie theatre in Niagara at the time and I remember him describing how loud the screaming was in the theatre from the moment the movie hit the screen until the screen finally went dark. It was so loud, he said, that he probably could have turned the audio for the film off and no one would noticed.
The audio was well worth listening to with songs penned by John Lennon and Paul McCartney that received praise from the likes of towering figures in the field of music at the time like Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Fiedler of Boston Pops fame.
The Beatles would go on to make the movie ‘Help’ the next year, followed by an animated cartoon depiction of them ‘Yellow Submarine’, a television film called ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ and finally ‘Let It Be’ that exposed signs of a group that had grown tired of the frenzy and was about to break up.
For me and I’m sure for many others though, there will always be the high-energy fun and excitement, not to mention soundtrack of songs that defined ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.
Watch it again, sixty years later, and all of that energy and excitement, along with a collection of songs that stands up pretty damn good, it is all still there.
To view a re-mastered copy of the official movie trailer for ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, click on the screen immediately below –
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