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Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
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Tuesday January 21, 2025
Movie Review: Beatles '64 (2024)
WARNING: SPOILERS
The Beatles arrived in America in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. “Beatles ’64” arrived on Disney+ in the aftermath of Trump’s second presidential election. I’ll leave it to history to decide which was the greater tragedy.
Though “Beatles ’64” was produced by Martin Scorsese, and directed by longtime Scorsese editor David Tedeschi (“No Direction Home,” “George Harrison: Living in the Material World”), the brunt of the material was filmed by Albert and David Maysles back in February ’64. The two American brothers, who were the documentarians seen filming Truman Capote’s “Black & White Ball” in the Hulu series “Capote vs. the Swans,” had been commissioned by the BBC to document how the trip went. That’s why the incredible access. They’re in the Plaza Hotel with the Beatles as the streets outside are besieged by fans. They’re in Central Park as the Beatles (sans George) pose for the NY press. They’re at a nightclub after the first “Ed Sullivan” performance as the boys drink and Ringo dances and semi-canoodles with … is it one of the Ronettes?
Relying on the Maysles footage gives the documentary a cinéma vérité quality, but was it the right move? I for one wouldn’t have minded more context.
And now … Fred Kaps!
Example: Didn’t Ed Sullivan book them because he had been delayed coming through Heathrow in the fall of ’63 by throngs of Beatles fans? I seem to remember reading that. He booked them as a novelty act. These weird British boys with pudding-bowl haircuts who thought they could play rock ‘n’ roll. Then he got lucky. By Feb. 9, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was No. 1 on the Billboard charts, a position it would hold for seven weeks, followed by “She Loves You” for two more and “Can’t Buy Me Love” for five. That’s 14 straight weeks—more than a quarter of a year! As a result, when the Beatles showed up at JFK Airport, née Idlewild, and pandemonium ensued, it helped Sullivan’s show garner the highest ratings in TV history.
And the Beatles don’t seem nervous!That’s what struck me watching “Beatles ’64.” It’s 73 million viewers wondering if they’re worthy of the attention, George has the flu, and they seem breezily confident. And sure, they’ve been doing what they’ve been doing for 5+ years, getting on stage and rockin’ and rollin’. But this is America, man, rock’s birthplace, man, and up to this point, no British or European rock act, or anything rock act, had ever made it there.
In the doc, we see them perform two songs from the Feb. 9 “Sullivan,” but that night they played five, and it’s intriguing how Paul-heavy their playlist was:
Opening:
- “All My Loving”
- “Till There Was You”
- “She Loves You”
Closing:
- “I Saw Her Standing There”
- “I Want to Hold Your Hand”
Was leaning on Paul a choice? Whose? Keeping “I Want to Hold Your Hand” for the end makes some sense, particularly for Ed Sullivan, but if you’re the Beatles shouldn’t you lead with your strength? And they go “Till There was You” second? I guess to win over the oldsters. I guess the bows weren’t enough.
In “Mr. Saturday Night,” an underrated 1992 mock biopic, Billy Crystal plays a Borscht Belt insult comic named Buddy Young Jr. for whom life keeps going awry, and one of the gags is he’s the guy who has to follow the Beatles on “Sullivan.” Here are the ones who actually did. This is the Feb. 9 show in full:
- The Beatles (three songs)
- Fred Kaps, Dutch magician
- Cast of “Oliver!,” including Davy Jones, singing “I’d Do Anything”
- Impressionist Frank Gorshin imagining Hollywood stars as political leaders; sadly, no Ronald Reagan
- Welsh singer Tessie O’Shea, then on Broadway in “The Girl Who Came to Supper”
- McCall and Brill, a B-grade Nichols and May
- The Beatles (two songs)
- Wells and the Four Fays, an Australian acrobat troupe
It was basically Beatles, Broadway, and what was left of vaudeville. It demonstrates why the Beatles were needed. And maybe why they weren’t nervous.
They were here 2+ weeks so why did they only play two concerts? After “Sullivan” we see them take the train down to D.C. to play the boxing-ring concert on Feb. 11 (with a young David Lynch in attendance), and then they take the train back to NYC for two concerts at Carnegie Hall on Feb. 12. And that’s it. Plus the Sullivan shows. Could Brian not book them? Did he want to give them a vacation?
I could’ve used more of their press conferences. The American press, taking its cues from Elvis, assumed rock acts were raunchy onstage and politely dull off it, while the Beatles were polite onstage, bowing after each song, and cheeky off it. They made the press conference a show in itself:
Reporter: Would you please sing something?
All four: NO!
Reporter: There’s some doubt that you can sing.
John [adjusting cufflink]: No, we need money first.
An eye-opening line about all this comes from George later in life:
Everybody in Liverpool thinks they’re a comedian. … All you got to do is drive up there, and go through the Mersey Tunnel, and the guy on the toll booth is a comedian. You know, they all are. We had that kind of bred and born into us.
I’d always assumed it was just them. That’s a great addition in this doc.
In that initial press conference, by the way, George says a line that’s not just Liverpudlian but sweet and poignant:
Reporter: What’s your ambition?
George: To go to America.
I’d seen tons of clips and ripostes from this press conference but never that one. And George says it in such a disarmingly charming way. He knows it’s funny but he means it, too.
And now … the Way-Outs!
You know what else I wanted? (I know, I want a lot.) At one point, talking head Joe Queenan talks about how the boys could’ve been from Mars, and I expected the doc to cut to a clip of the Way-Outs, a mop-top foursome who appeared on “The Flintstones,” and who may or may not have been actual aliens. I wanted all those ’60s sitcom depictions of Beatles-ish bands—from The Mosquitos on “Gilligan’s Island” to The Ladybugs on “Petticoat Junction”—which indicates not only their impact but how strange they appeared to American eyes initially. I guess making us see with those eyes would be hard and/or impossible to do, since, 60 years later, it's the Beatles who seem the normal ones: down-to-earth, and, as the tour continues, increasingly wary of everything pressing in on them—particularly opportunists like Murray the K. “I think the craziness was going on in the world,” George says in a later interview. “I mean, you could do 30 minutes of film just showing how idiotic everybody else was whenever the Beatles came to town.”
Where did Tedeschi and Scorsese get their talking heads? Why these people? Because someone knew someone? I’m talking less Smokey Robinson than, say, Jamie Bernstein, daughter of Leonard, or Danny Bennett, son of Tony, or Jack Douglas, who, as a young man, smuggled his way into Liverpool for the day and later as a record producer worked with John Lennon. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be in the doc, I’m just curious how they got tapped. Douglas seems lovely, and it’s surely a sign of the mania that Liverpool seemed the promised land to him, but is it a story for “Beatles ’64”?
Queenan has a great line about the impact of the music itself:
December of ’63 my sister had the radio on and I heard “She Loves You” … [breaks] … It’s like the light came on. … It’s like total darkness. And then the light comes on.
The doc opens with that total darkness, with the promise of JFK and the horror of his assassination, and so I assumed it would be bookended with John Lennon’s assassination 16 years later. It would certainly be easy to do. The Plaza Hotel, where they stayed, is on the southeast corner of Central Park, while the Dakota, outside of which John Lennon was standing on Dec. 8, 1980, is on the west side, a mile away. Wouldn’t take much to draw that line. But they don’t go there. Probably better.
“What's your ambition?” “To go to America.”