The Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ Turns 60: ‘The First Movie Made for the Soundtrack!’

During the height of Beatlemania in 1964 , everything that the Fab Four touched seemed to turn to gold (remember their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show ?), so it was only logical that a studio would want a feature film with The Beatles. After all, if rock and roll movies worked for Elvis Presley (again, and again and again), they would have to work for John Lennon, Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr, right? And besides, even if said movie flopped, it was reasoned, there would still be a pop music soundtrack album that would likely make millions. Sixty years later, of course, it's obvious that A Hard Day's Night did not flop.

Back in the day, producer Walter Shenson and United Artists came up with a three-picture deal that appealed to The Beatles. The idea insofar as the studio was concerned was to cash in on the group’s popularity before this “fad” (as they were often dismissed as at the time) began to dissipate. Shenson, who passed away back in 2000 at the age of 81, had the good sense to have a clause in his contract that stated all rights to the resulting films would revert to him in 15 years' time. This clause would prove most beneficial as he was the man who put both A Hard Day’s Night and its 1965 follow-up, Help!, out on videotape and, later, DVD, with the first film actually scoring a theatrical re-release.

From the archives comes this never-before-posted exclusive interview with Mr. Walter Shenson, producer of A Hard Day's Night (the title of which came from an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo).

WOMAN'S WORLD : Looking back a bit, when did you become aware of the group?

WALTER SHENSON: I was in London when The Beatles came through. I was living there and had been an executive at Columbia Pictures, and after that an independent movie producer. So one couldn’t help but be aware of The Beatles when one lived in London, which was long before anything happened in America and other parts of the world. The Beatles were headlines from the very beginning in 1963. I had been making British comedies and was just delighted when I got the chance to produce a movie with them.

WW : How did A Hard Day’s Night come about?

WS: United Artists approached me as an independent producer to make the film for their distribution company. They wanted to make a modest budget picture with The Beatles so that United Artists Records would have a soundtrack album to sell. Probably one of the first times a movie was made basically for the soundtrack, which, of course, happens all the time today. United Artists felt that if the movie was not successful, they had a good chance of recouping their investment with the soundtrack — obviously the movie was very successful, and the soundtrack even more so. We made a deal for three pictures with The Beatles, and the next year we made Help! . I didn’t produce a third picture, but they on their own made a film called Let It Be, which was the filming of the recording session. I wasn’t involved with it, but it was part of my deal.

WW: Would you say that A Hard Day’s Night altered the way that rock movies would be presented in the future?

WS: I think so. I think it’s a landmark movie. Dick Lester, who was a young director at the time, directed this script which was a brilliant screenplay by a writer from Liverpool named Alun Owen, who could write in The Beatles’ idiom. That script and Richard Lester’s great sense as a director resulted in a perfect marriage between material, director and The Beatles. We wanted to make the film unlike any other film of the time by giving it a sense of urgency and a feeling of actuality. We wanted that film to look like it was not a scripted picture, and that it was kind of a recording of a day in the life of The Beatles. But it was indeed a well scripted picture, because Alun Owen got an Oscar nomination for the screenplay.

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WW: It was so much better than those awful Elvis Presley movies of the time.

WS: Those were typical Hollywood conservative movies they were making. We didn’t want to do that kind of picture, because The Beatles were not like that. They were breaking new ground all the time, and why put them back into the mold when they were breaking their own molds? I think we did a good job in making a movie that reflected The Beatles in that period.

WW: It seems to have aged very well.

WS: I wouldn’t say it has a contemporary feel to it, but it certainly is an artistic breakthrough in filmmaking. A lot of pictures have copied that style, and of course I know that The Monkees series was stolen right from that picture. When I say stolen, I mean they used every technique we used in A Hard Day’s Night . In fact, they [the producers] manufactured a group to cash in on the popularity of The Beatles.

WW: The original reviews for the film were good, weren’t they?

WS: They were better than good. They were raves. The picture was on everybody’s 10-Best list. It got two Oscar nominations and wasn’t just a quickie exploitation movie cashing in on the popularity of The Beatles. If it wasn’t a good move, you wouldn’t be talking to me about it so many years later.

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WW: Were you surprised that The Beatles were as good as they were on film?

WS: Of course! They were a natural. All I knew was what everybody else knew, that the music was good. I had seen a couple of their concerts in London, but I had no idea that their movie presence was going to be that strong. If you’ve seen the video of the film, you  know what I mean—you can’t keep your eyes off The Beatles. So I was indeed surprised, because when I saw the first film, while they were shooting it, it amazed me how compelling they were. It had nothing to do with the singing or the story. It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing that four young men getting together would each have such strong screen personalities, and yet all different. So that is kind of lucky and phenomenal that they found each other, and each one is such an individual artist.

WW: What were your impressions of the group back then?

WS: Being a generation older, I thought they were terribly bright. I was impressed by the fact that they had been brought up well, were extremely courteous and never rude, and were warm, friendly and decent. The first impression I got was as a boss, and they did what we told them to do. And I think the other thing I was impressed with was how bright they were. They were such quick studies. When the director told them he wanted something to happen, and explained why, they caught on immediately. There were never any problems, and they were very professional.

WW: One hell of a compliment at the time was the comparison of them to the Marx Brothers.

WS: The interesting thing is that they had never heard of the Marx Brothers until people pointed that out in some of the reviews, and then they arranged to see some of the old Marx Brothers pictures, which of course they loved,. But there’s no question about it: They are originals and they copied no one.

WW: No one could have imagined that the phenomenon would have continued the way that it has.

WS: I know for a fact that when the film was finished, the salespeople at United Artists asked me if I thought The Beatles were going to last, because we rushed it out quickly in order to cash in on their popularity. I said, “I haven’t a clue whether they’re going to last or not,” and they said the reason they wanted to know was because they were wondering if they should saturate the market with prints, or let it go out and grow. I told them that it was anybody’s guess, but prints were not expensive in those days, and advertising was not expensive, because we didn’t have to take television spots and things like that. I said, “You might as well put out a few hundred prints and cash in on it.” And here we are still talking about it. Who could have told? But it was a good question to ask.

WW: The Beatles themselves were constantly growing and evolving.

WS: That’s one of the things I liked about them. They were very progressive. One of the reasons we did not make a third movie was because they didn’t want to do anything that was similar to what they had done before. A Hard Day’s Night was black and white and in a documentary style. Help! was color, filmed on locations and sort of what I call a movie-movie. We couldn’t find a third story. It was impossible. I interviewed playwrights, screenwriters, novelists and anybody on the street who had an idea. It was hard to come up with something that would satisfy them. It wasn’t a question of “Let’s make another movie and we’ll make some more money.” They had all the money they needed from the records. Money never entered their heads at all. I wish we had made the third movie, but yet again, if we had done so, and it wasn’t as good as the first two, it might have hurt them.

I’ll tell you something about A Hard Day’s Night . A lot of young people who were buying the Beatles’ records, whether they could articulate it or not, had a feeling for The Beatles. If you asked a 13-year-old why they were popular, they may not have been able to tell you. But they felt something from them. Anybody from my generation didn’t know what it was all about, but when A Hard Day’s Night came out, it literally made The Beatles legitimate in the eyes of the nonbelievers. There were adults who wouldn’t be caught dead listening to a Beatles record, who went to see the movie four or five times. And these were very prominent people whose children convinced them to go see the movie. People like Leonard Bernstein. There are reviews that indicated, “Now we know why The Beatles are so popular with young people.” There was a contagion about it, and we were lucky that we did it right.

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WW: It’s funny, but there’s actually a sound of relief in your voice.

WS: This may sound a little pompous, but I was worried, given the responsibility to produce their first movie at the height of their careers, that I didn’t blow it. I didn’t want to be the one responsible for hurting them when they were on the rise. I know people can overcome bad movies, but I just didn’t want that to happen. Despite all the goodwill and hard work that goes into a film, an awful lot of bad movies come out and nobody starts out to make a bad movie. So I was pleased that it not only kept The Beatles in good stead with their fans, but it enhanced their popularity.

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