written by Pete Hammond, Deadline
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of The Beatles‘ the’ first visit to the USA in February 1964, Martin Scorsese has put the band back together, so to speak. Scorsese produces along with others including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison, and Sean Ono Lennon this wildly entertaining and smartly conceived new documentary that liberally mixes footage from the iconic 1964 documentary chronicling the Fab Four’s visit, which was the result of unprecedented access given to directors Albert and David Maysles (Gimme Shelter), plus new interviews including Paul and Ringo, remixed musical tracks and the Ed Sullivan Show appearance and much more.
Beatles ’64 will begin streaming on Friday November 29 on Disney +, which no doubt is trying to replicate its success with Peter Jackson’s landmark 2021 miniseries The Beatles: Get Back, which won five Emmys.
That film chronicled the recording of their legendary 1969 album Let It Be with rare footage and was followed in 2022 by an Imax release of their actual final concert together as The Beatles: Get Back – The Rooftop Concert. What producer Scorsese and director David Tedeschi are delivering here not only is a nostalgic and tune-filled journey back to another time but a fascinating and sociological exploration of what The Beatles explosion was all about — now seen six decades later by many of the people who were there at the time including teenage fans now in their 70s.
Beatles ’64 focuses on those three weeks beginning February 7, 1964, when the Beatles de-planed at JFK Airport in NYC, and follows them through that city and the immortal Ed Sullivan Show appearance, and then on to Washington D.C. and finally Miami. The Maysles brothers and their cameras became a fly on the wall through all of it, much of the time with the boys goofing off in hotel rooms while teenage girls camped outside the Plaza Hotel were trying to figure out ways to get closer to them. The footage in this section darts back and forth from the inside to the outside. The Maysles’ 16MM docu What’s Happening! The Beatles In The U.S.A. was seen as a March ’64 special episode of the CBS show The Entertainers. In 1991 the footage from the 81-minute docu was re-edited and released as The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit.
Now it is given new life, with added insights and the passage of time, from not only McCartney — who is filmed visiting a Beatles exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum and commenting on what he recalls most about that ’64 U.S. debut — and Starr showing off part of his own Beatles collection of suits he wore then but none other than Scorsese, who appears on camera as an interested interviewer, however briefly. McCartney wryly remembers that when they played their recording of “She Loves You” for his father, he said Dad was complimentary but asked if they could change the lyrics of “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah” to “Yes! Yes! Yes!” for a more grammatically proper usage.
The film opens with footage of the November 1963 funeral of President Kennedy before moving on to the game-changing arrival of The Beatles just a little over two months later, an event McCartney thinks might have been cathartic for a still-mourning America. The history of rock ‘n’ roll from the ’50s and The Beatles’ unique interest and admiration in covering black artists like Little Richard and Smokey Robinson also is detailed, as well as the outrage in some quarters and among parents as to the influence of this mop-topped quartet from Liverpool. The breathless news coverage gets almost ridiculous as their trip is reported even on the network nightly news shows. Referring to one member’s bout with a “sore throat,” one newspaper headline read, “Beatle Has a Bug.”
New interviews include writer Joe Queenan telling how his abusive father would beat his kids and not allow them to see the band but that going to the Beatles in concert was more important to him than any obstacle. Music producer Jack Douglas tells of a trip he took to Liverpool to trace the Mersey sound with his buddy, only to run into trouble with the law. Little did he know that later he would be working with the legendary icons. Artists like Robinson, Ron Isley, and Ronnie Spector talk about their own interactions with the group and the effects on them. Photographer Harry Benson, director David Lynch and others are interviewed. Danny Bennett shows off rare Beatles merch including wigs, talcum powder, sneakers and even a sawed-off seat matching a Beatles ticket from the Shea Stadium concert acquired as the ballpark was being torn down.
Best of all, however, are the numerous up-close interviews with the teenage fans in the streets, then and now. Leonard Bernstein’s daughter Jamie talks about her initial dreams of George Harrison commenting on her bra, but then switching her attention to John Lennon. The vintage footage of the young girls scheming to get past security in the hotel and into the Beatles’ rooms is hilarious and clearly inspired Robert Zemeckis’ early comedy, I Wanna Hold Your Hand. Nothing in that movie could match the real thing brought back to vivid life here in this raw black-and-white footage.
Attempts to explain the phenomenon at the time by the likes of Betty Friedan and Marshall McLuhan are almost comical to watch now as they assess the reasons for the hysterical behavior by these young fans, some of it with “sexual” overtones. Scenes in the hotel rooms where then-WINS radio personality Murray the K got unfettered access explains why he spent the rest of his career calling himself the “Fifth Beatle.” And of course there is extensive time devoted to the Sullivan show itself and its incredible impact, seen by an unheard-of 73 million homes. We also get well-chosen interviews with Lennon by Tom Snyder years later on his NBC talk show and with Harrison in interviews also used in Scorsese’s 2011 epic documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World which was edited by Tedeschi in his first collaboration with Scorsese.
One priceless sequence has The Beatles in D.C. invited to the British Embassy, where many of the invitees at the reception turned up their noses. McCartney now just laughs and says, “We didn’t give a flying f*ck!”
Beatles ’64 is a gem, a voyage back in time to try and put into perspective a life-changing moment for so many. It would be a great double feature with the fictionalized comedy A Hard Day’s Night, which started shooting almost immediately upon their return to London and was released in summer of ’64. It even got two Oscar nominations including Original Screenplay. I can still vividly recall the first time I ever heard of The Beatles. I was with my buddy Bobby Barr in his room, where he showed off his new Beatles hat and album Meet the Beatles. As one of their signature early songs used in this docu says. “There are places I’ll remember, All my life.” Where I first “met” The Beatles was one of them.
