In 1964, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr made their on screen debuts in The Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night. The film took advantage of their ever rising fame and was both a critical and financial success. The band also enjoyed shooting the film, though they found some parts of the process embarrassing. Lennon shared the scene he found tough to film and watch.
John Lennon said The Beatles were embarrassed to film 1 scene in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
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The Beatles had no acting experience when they began filming A Hard Day’s Night but they jumped into their roles eagerly. They began filming in March at Marylebone Station.
“It was a great day out,” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “We filmed the scene where all the fans run into the train station then the train pulls off, leaving the fans, so then we could get on with the rest of the filming. The train took us somewhere and back, and we had all the scenes made.”
While McCartney said it was exciting to start filming, Lennon had a harder time warming up to it. He said he found the scenes on the train embarrassing.
“The train bit embarrasses us now,” Lennon said. “I’m sure it’s less noticeable to people watching in the cinema, but we know that we’re dead conscious in every move we make, we watch each other. Paul’s embarrassed when I’m watching him speak and he knows I am.”
He explained that they were all so nervous that they couldn’t make it through their lines without laughing.
“You can see the nervous bits normally in pictures: things like the end — you make that on one day, and on the next day you do the beginning. But we did it almost in sequence,’ he said. “The first [scene] we did was the train, which we were all dead nervous in. Practically the whole of the train bit we were going to pieces.”
John Lennon and the other Beatles enjoyed filming the movie
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Though Lennon was nervous and embarrassed at the start of the shoot, he grew to enjoy it. According to Starr, he and Lennon liked acting more than their other two bandmates.
“I think because I loved films I was less embarrassed than the others to be in one; John really got into the movie, too,” he said. “I felt a lot of the time that George didn’t want to be there. It was something he was doing because we were doing it.”
Harrison said this was not true, though. While he didn’t like the early wake up calls, he enjoyed acting.
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“I don’t know what he’s talking about, I loved it!” he said. “The only thing I didn’t like was having to get up at five in the morning.”
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Harrison also met his future wife, Pattie Boyd, on set, which added to his enjoyment.
The band made more movies
One year after A Hard Day’s Night, The Beatles released their second film, Help! Though it was not as well received as their first movie, critics still generally enjoyed it. The same could not be said for their third film, Magical Mystery Tour. The movie premiered on television after Christmas and became the first real flop of their careers.
In 1968, the band released Yellow Submarine. Though the band appeared on screen at the end of the film, they had little to do with it. Actors voiced the cartoon versions of them.
