The story began in Harold Macmillan's "Never had it so good" '50s Britain. It should be fiction: four teenagers with no more than eight O'Levels between them, running and biking and busing and busking all over Liverpool in search of new chords and old guitars and half-decent drum kit and any gig at all. They were determined to amount to something – in George's words "we just had this amazing inner feeling of: 'We're going to do it'. I don't know why... we were just cocky" – and make a record (in Ringo's words you'd kill for that bit of plastic and make some money and have a laugh and shout. That would do to be going on with).
They were fighting all over Britain. Rarely a night passed without an outbreak in some town or other. Sometimes it was a mere skirmish involving a few hundred police, but more often there was a pitched battle with broken legs, cracked ribs and bloody noses. The police do their best, but it was well known that they were secretly in sympathy with the battlers. The cause of this shattering of the English peace was a phenomenon called The Beatles. To see a Beatle was a joy, to touch one paradise on earth, and for just the slimmest opportunity of this privilege, people would fight like mad things and with the dedication normally reserved for a great cause, like national survival.
One of the earlier photos of The Beatles
The Beatles were four young men who played guitars and drums and sang pop songs they wrote themselves. This sounds like merely a minor accomplishment, but it wasn't, not the way they did it, and the noise they made while they were doing it, and the spectacularly demented way they look while they were doing it. By comparison, Elvis Presley was an Edwardian tenor of considerable diffidence. For months thefanchory were the preoccupation of the British, eclipsing the Government, the prospects of a general election, Christine Keeler, even football. One shake of the bushy fringe of their identical, moplike haircuts was enough to start a riot in any theater where they were appearing and bring out the massed and augmented forces of order, ranging from the fire brigade to elderly auxiliary constables called up from retirement because there weren't sufficient ordinary coppers to cope.
A sample of the battle reports the first ten days of November 1963 showed that in Carlisle, 400 schoolgirls fought the police for four hours while attempting to get tickets for a Beatles show; that in Dublin young limbs snapped like twigs in a tremendous free-for-all during the Beatles first visit to the city (the police chief, with characteristic Irishness said: "It was all right until the mania degenerated into barbarism"); that at London Airport, a woman news reporter had her hand kissed repeatedly simply because the hand had accidentally brushed the sleeve of a Beatle; that during rehearsals for the Royal Variety Show, the Beatles were marooned inside the London Paladium for 13 hours because the authorities considered it unsafe for them to leave; and that in Birmingham, the only way the boys could evade the mob was to disguise themselves as police, complete with capes and helmets. A lad in Bedford who had a similar haircut and a vague facial resemblance to one of the singers was set upon by a score of girls. "It's always happening to me," he said philosophically.
Screaming fans attack. Facial expressions say it all!
The four Beatles were (as of 1963) John Lennon, 23, the leader of the group and the only one who was then married; Paul McCartney, 21; George Harrison, 20; and Ringo Starr, 23. In nine months they sold nearly 3,000,000 records with titles like "From Me To You," "Twist and Shout," and "Love Me Do. Their music was basically rock 'n' roll, but less formalized, slightly more inventive. Their act, which included much ad-libbing between numbers, was both hilarious and outrageous. The ad-libbing was something they learned while they were working the clubs in Hamburg, the city which gave them their basic professionalism. Hour after hour, in three or four clubs a night, they toiled away at the massive, unvarying beat doted on by German audiences. To relieve the boredom they took to shouting English obscenities at the Germans. This went down very well, being beyond the comprehension of the audience, which thought the obscenities were an essential part of an act by an English beat group.
Later, when the screams got too loud, the boys advance on the footlights and in unison shouted: "Aw, shuttup: Other words were added, off microphone. They tended not to be of the sort one would have reproduced in newspapers at the time. For special occasions the formula was varied slightly. At the Royal Variety Show the Beatles instructed the Audience: "Those in the cheaper seats can clap their hands during the next number, the rest of you can rattle your jewelry." Offstage, their comments were apt and, for people without the services of a script writer, neatly phrased. McCartney, on the popular reaction to the group (said in late 1963): "The kind of impact we're having now is like what my old aunt felt when she first heard Bing Crosby. Harrison: "Naturally, I'm part of my generation, which means I couldn't stand waiting for a horse to take me to the village pub like they used to. And Starr, with the opposite quote on the long-term prospects of a short-term tradesman: "I suppose I'd like to end up sort of unforgettable."
German poster art.
Their impact on Britain had been greater than that of any other exponent of pop music. There had been adulation before, with Johnnie ("Cry") Ray and later with home-grown singers like Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard, but, no one had taken the national fancy as the Beatles. Their appeal was strongest to females between 10 and 30, but Beatlemania, as it was called, affected all social classes and all levels of intelligence. At the Royal Variety Show in 1963, the Queen Mother was seen clapping on the off-beat and Princess Margaret snapped her fingers to show she was with it too. Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home could not get through his election campaign at Kinross without declaring to the electorate that he doted on the Beatles, and he gave the right answer to an election meeting to the joker who asked him: "Would you let your daughter marry a Beatle?" The most unpopular politician in Britain was Edward Heath, a Conservative minister who was rash enough to announce that he didn't think the Beatles spoke the Queen's English. His daily mail had since been filled with threats of violence and sinister drawings of black beetles. The Beatles rehearsals then always began with Lennon intoning: "We will now have the cursing of Edward Heath."
The reasons for their appeal have been analyzed and annotated in millions of words in newspapers, magazines, and sociological and psychological journals. They have generated as much fog as you will see on a winter's morning in Liverpool, the rough old port where the Beatles were born. But when the nonsense is blown away, these seem to be the basic factors in the extraordinary success of the Beatles:
They were working-class, and their roots and attitudes were firmly of the North of England. Because of their success they could act as spokesmen for the new, noisy anti-Establishment generation which was becoming a force in British life. In their uncompromising Northernness, they were linked with actors like Albert Finney in the theater and films and with novelists like Allan Sillitoe and John Braine. The Beatles were part of a strong-flowing reaction against the soft, middle-class South of England, which had controlled popular culture for so long. The most important thing about the Beatles is that they came from Liverpool. In this city, where the Catholics and Protestants fought every Saturday night after the pubs have closed, there were close to 300 beat groups performing in converted cinemas, cellar clubs-anywhere where an amplifier could be plugged in. The combined they made had come to be known as the Liverpool Sound. The significance of the Sound is that it was a raspberry blown in the direction of London.
Rare alternate poster from Poland.
The rise of the Beatles also marked the end of American domination of popular music in Britain. Naturally, songs from the US continued to pour in, but the recordings which reached the hit parade had to be made by British groups. The songs which the Beatles wrote themselves had underlined a change in the attitude to sex in pop music. Yearning was out. Jealousy and recrimination don't get into the lyrics either. Instead, the Beatle proposition concerning girls was cheerful and obvious: grab the bird you fancy and if it doesn't work there will be another one along in a minute. This kind of rudely honest urgency was apparent too in the boys' feelings about the future. For them, the future was not some peaceful, pensioned retirement in the country: it was just around the corner.
A record setting 73 million people tuned in that evening making it one of the seminal moments in television history. Nearly fifty years later, people still remember exactly where they were the night The Beatles stepped onto Ed Sullivan's stage. In the weeks leading up to the performance, several Beatles records had already hit number one on the U.S. charts, and the radio airwaves were saturated with their tunes. The delirium and ground swell of anticipation surrounding The Beatles' arrival from England had not been seen around since Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956. But even that experience could not have prepared the Sullivan staff and the New York City authorities for what was about to happen.
Upon their arrival in the United States, The Beatles visit Central Park
The story of how The Beatles landed on The Ed Sullivan Show began with the group's formation in Liverpool in 1960. They spent their first couple of years playing in small clubs throughout Europe. During late night gigs in the city of Hamburg, Germany, sometimes playing as long as eight hours a night, The Beatles perfected their act. However, it was not until an appearance on the British television show, "Val Parnell's Sunday Night at the London Palladium" and the 1963 release of their first album, Please Please Me that "Beatlemania" began to spread. That March the album hit number one on the British charts, and by the end of the year, The Beatles' music permeated UK radio. The "Fab Four" even performed for the royal family. It was only after this burgeoning success at home did The Beatles and their manager, Brian Epstein, choose to launch their American invasion. They decided when they had a #1 song on the U.S. charts, then they would lock in the date of their Ed Sullivan debut.
There are a number of stories regarding exactly how The Beatles came to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. The most popular is that in 1963, while arriving at London's Heathrow airport, Ed Sullivan and his wife Sylvia encountered thousands of youngsters waiting excitedly in the rain. When Sullivan asked what all the commotion was about, he was told that a British band named The Beatles was returning home from a tour in Sweden. When he got to his hotel room, Sullivan purportedly inquired about booking the group for his show. However, it was not until later that year that The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein reached an agreement with Ed Sullivan to bring the group to America to perform live for the first time on U.S. television. Following dinner at the Hotel Delmonico in New York City, a handshake between the two men sealed the deal for performances on three shows to air in 1964. In return, The Beatles would receive $10,000 for their three appearances and top billing.
The Beatles on the highest ever rated episode of The Ed Sullivan Show.
Prior to their debut on the Sullivan show, The Beatles' record "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was leaked in advance of its planned US release to radio stations across the country. When attorneys for Capitol Records were unable to stop American DJs from spinning the tune, the record label relented and, on December 26, 1963, dropped the album ahead of schedule. The record sold 250,000 copies in the first three days. By January 10, 1964 it had sold over one million units and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was the number one song on the Billboard charts by month's end. In the weeks leading up to The Beatles' performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, Beatlemania went viral. Radio stations played the band's music nearly non-stop; teenaged fans sported "Beatle" wigs, and bumper stickers across the country warned, "The Beatles Are Coming."
In the inevitable breaking down of old liaisons, there was room for growth. John met and married Yoko; Paul met and married Linda. George matured far beyond his years, settled into his spiritual space and expressed himself writing classic songs; Ringo was now writing his own numbers and was widely acknowledged as a supreme drummer and a very good actor. To everything there is a season.
several of hundreds of nation newspapers announcing the arrival of the pop group.
The Film
It was decided by Heinz Edelman (Art Director) that the film would be a series of animated connected shorts, as full feature animated movies were not popular then at the boxoffice except for the Disney brand. He decided that the style should change every five or six minutes so that the audience would retain their interest. He also wanted the film to show a pre-modern innocence that was not prevalent in other rock and roll music but was with many Beatles songs. Collage styles from other modern classics were used as ideas for the feature's animation. Lasseter wrote in his essay, "As a fan of animation and as a filmmaker, I tip my hat to the artists of Yellow Submarine, whose revolutionary work helped pave the way for the fantastically diverse world of animation that we all enjoy today." For animation, a temporary company called Subafilms, Ltd. Did the work. It is believed that cartoonist Peter Max had some input on some of the characters but that is debated.
Yellow Submarine began its voyage to the screen when Brodax, who had previously produced nearly 40 episodes of ABC's animated Beatles TV series, approached The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein with a unique vision for a full-length animated feature. Yellow Submarine was a tale brimming with peace, love, and hope, propelled by Beatles songs, including "Eleanor Rigby," "When I'm Sixty-Four," "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," "All You Need Is Love," and "It's All Too Much." When the film debuted in 1968, it was instantly recognized as a landmark achievement, revolutionizing a genre by integrating the freestyle approach of the era with innovative animation techniques.
Pre-production of "Yellow Submarine."
Inspired by the generation's new trends in art, the film resides with the dazzling Pop Art styles of Andy Warhol, Martin Sharp, Alan Aldridge and Peter Blake. With art direction and production design by Heinz Edelmann, Yellow Submarine is a classic of animated cinema, featuring the creative work of animation directors Robert Balser and Jack Stokes with a team of animators and technical artists. "I thought from the very beginning that the film should be a series of interconnected shorts" remembered Edelmann. "The style should vary every five minutes or so to keep the interest going until the end." These styles included melding live-action photography with animation, 3-dimensional sequences and kaleidoscopic "rotoscoping" where film is traced frame by frame into drawings. The entire process took nearly two years, 14 different scripts, 40 animators and 140 technical artists, ultimately producing a groundbreaking triumph of animation, still completely unique to film.
Pre-production sketches
In 1967, American-born animator Bob Balser was working on a project in Spain when he received an invitation to fly to London and try his hand at designing animated characters based on the Beatles. The project? A full-length cartoon feature film called Yellow Submarine. "They had to get started quickly, because they had a screening date set for July of the following year," Balser recalls. "They had just one year to do an entire feature-length animated film." The schedule was tight, and the budget was small: slightly less than $1 million. But among the talents assembled for the film were special effects director Charlie Jenkins and celebrated illustrator and graphic designer Heinz Edelmann—not to mention the Beatles, whose music would be featured throughout and who would themselves make a cameo in the film. When Balser was offered the chance to work as a director on the film, he took it. "It was," he says, "probably one of the best years of my life."
Aside from their enormous and historic success as a musical aggregation, Liverpool's unique gift to civilization, The Beatles have scored as the stars of motion pictures, a cartoon series, countless number one records and a standout television show. In they became the "stars" of a full-length animated feature which was the first of its kind to animate famous living people. Apple Films presented and King Features (Popeye, Betty Boop) produced Yellow Submarine, which United Artists brought to the screen. The title was based on what was then a new song by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It also "starred" Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Introduced in the film were three new Beatle musical offerings, and in addition there were 11 of the famous aggregation's all-time hits.
Original storyboards
Yellow Submarine was from an original story by Lee Minoff, author of the Broadway hit "Come Live With Me." Assisting him in bringing the story to the screen were Al Brodax the animation's producer who was then head of the TV and Motion Picture Division of King Features, world's largest syndicator of newspaper comics, columns and features; Jack Mendelsohn, creator of the comic strip "Jackie's Diary" and Erich Segal who, when he was not writing books and gags for show biz was an assistant professor of Classics at Yale University with several authoritative works on Greek and Roman culture to his credit.
Czeck poster
While they are not seen in the flesh on the screen but as hand-drawn animations, the music of The Beatles in Yellow Submarine are indeed those of George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. George Dunning directed Yellow Submarine. A holder of almost a dozen film awards at the time, he gained a world-wide fame with his triple-screen cartoon "Canada Is My Piano," one of the hits of the Expo 67. He was also responsible for the comedic title treatments in the Peter Sellers hit "A Shot In The Dark" and those in "Inspector Clousseau." Dunning also produced the television series "Cool McCool" and "The Beatles." Among the all-time Beatles classics heard in Yellow Submarine are "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "Help!" "Michelle," "When I'm Sixty-Four' "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds," "All You Need is Love," "Love You Too" and "A Little Help From My Friends."
Animation cells
Probably the outstanding popular hit of the Expo 67 in Montreal was the unusual triple-screen cartoon "Canada Is My Piano," the work of George Dunning, holder of six awards from outstanding world film festivals and perhaps the greatest behind-the-scenes master mind of motion picture animations in the business in the mis 1960's. But, say those who know about such things, all his previous triumphs were merely warm-ups for his directorial stint of Yellow Submarine. Yellow Submarine was said to be the first full-length animation ever made which employed animations of actual living performers. Among the non-living performers of the film was Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, also not among the unknowns of show biz.
Original lobby cards.
Dunning, who perfected his craft with Norman McLaren, pioneer in the field of film animation and who had a hand in popularizing "Boing, Boing," was the founder of Canada's TV Cartoons, Ltd., which among other things had produced hundreds of TV commercials for some of the world's largest sponsors, and a number of which have won prizes from Cannes to New York. The new full-length animation is from a screenplay by Lee Minoff with assistance from Brodax, Jack Mendelsohn and Erich Segal, the latter a Yale professor of Roman and Greek classics who had been making a name for himself as a writer of high comedy.
A model of the submarine is located in Liverpool UK across from the Albert dock and is still famous with tourists.
When a foursome of long-haired kids from the Liverpool waterfront burst upon the startled scene with a distinctive type of music and approach to life, the kids observed that they were only a fad. That was a few years previous to the film Yellow Submarine and not only had that foursome not gone away and the world returned to normal, but they had so ingrained themselves into the contemporary fabric as to be considered the instigators of what has been called by many the greatest revolution in popular music if not of an outlook on life of all time. While they had pretty well given up the demanding and back-breaking business of appearing personally on tour, they placed high among the true greats of recorded music. Then they made their debut in animated cartoon form in their first full-length visit to the never-never land of fantasy.
Pre-production/ editing photos
Yellow Submarine is replete with famous Beatle hits both old and new played and sung by the Beatles. The Beatles were a pretty serious lot. They knew they had contributed something genuine to modern life, and they were proud of it. John Lennon, the unofficial leader of the group, was still the farthest out, the most rebellious and unconventional, and together with Paul McCartney, the man of many musical talents, they wrote most of their music. George Harrison's dabblings with oriental music earned him a new reputation as a serious musician, while Ringo Starr, the poker-faced Harpo Marx-anchor man of the quartette, demonstrated an ability for hard work which surprised everybody.
Poster from Poland
Yellow Submarine is loaded with inside jokes, and many subtle and not so subtle anomalies. In his new book, "Inside The Yellow Submarine", Dr. Hieronimus reveals many of the films secrets. One of my favorite chapters is the one in which Heinz Edelmann, one of the creative geniuses behind Yellow Submarine as well as many other great works, talks about several anomalies. In the scene where the Beatles are sneaking around Pepperland with what appears to be cardboard cutouts of bonked Pepperland people. After the Blue Meanie with the bulldogs on a leash passes by and day turns to night, the Beatles are found hiding in some bushes with their Pepperland cutouts. You can clearly see that George has a cutout of a man with a wide bottomed jacket on. Then there is a close-up of the other Beatles moving their cutouts around and Ringo gets his nose smashed between a couple of them. Next you see George come in from the left. He is holding his Pepperland cutout by the bottom bulge of the man's jacket - but you can only see a small portion of it. He runs his hand over the bump and then passes in front of the camera from left to right. As he passes, the cutout turns out to be the naked torso of a busty woman that George is carrying by the breasts. And he has just finished massaging one of them on camera!
Publicity still for "Yellow Submarine."
Al Brodax produced and helped write the script. Free lancer and trail-blazer in the field of TV dramatics, Brodax took over the then-new film department of King Features, the newspaper syndicate, in 1959 and has since superintended for them the greatest output of animated footage on a year-round basis in the business. These included "Popeye," "Beetle Bailey," Barney Google and Snuffy Smith," "Krazy Kat," "Cool McCool" and "The Beatles." Erich Segal was an assistant professor of the classics at Yale University. Mr. Segal had written and lectured on Roman and Greek culture. He also wrote on our culture in the form of scripts for TV, Broadway, and films.
Reissue
A restored and remastered edition of Yellow Submarine made the rounds at movie houses around the country prior to its June 5 release on Blu-ray . Beginning May 5, Yellow Submarine made its way across the country for brief, limited engagements. The film, out of print on DVD for a while now, has been restored in 4K digital resolution by Paul Rutan Jr. at Triage Archival Motion Picture Services, POP Sound and Eque digital restorarion. This is the first upgrade for the movie since its original DVD release. Due to the delicate nature of the hand-drawn original artwork, no automated software was used in the digital clean-up of the film's restored photochemical elements. The film was restored the old fashioned way, frame by frame, by hand. When the film, directed by animation producer George Dunning, premiered in 1968, it was heralded as a real achievement in the field of animation.
Production photos from the original film.
The look of the film is very much of its time. The music, of course, gets equal billing with the animation Producer George Martin also provides an orchestral score for the project. There is also a new CD reissue of the score. On April 24, Candlewick Press released a new, compact hardcover edition of the Yellow Submarine picture book, a read-aloud journey for the whole family. Featuring the lighthearted wit of the film's script alongside original artwork from the movie the 40-page book is being sold by retailers everywhere and on the Beatles Store (www.thebeatles.com). An interactive digital version of the book is also available as a free download on Apple's iBookstore and other outlets.
Japanese poster
Remake
Disney had confirmed that Robert Zemeckis, who has directed such films as Back to the Future and Forrest Gump, would be directing a 3D adaptation of the 1968 animated hit, Yellow Submarine. Zemeckis has been quoted saying, "Yellow Submarine is one of the greatest fantasy films of all time, and making this new 3D performance capture movie is a dream come true for me. With the latest advances in technology, we will be able to take moviegoers on a voyage unlike any other, and bring new excitement and dimension to Pepperland and the various sea worlds they encounter. I'm thrilled to be working with the good folks at Apple Corps and our partners at Disney on this epic retelling of one of my all time favorite films." In 2010 it was announced that Cary Elwes, Dean Lennox Kelly, Peter Serafinowicz and Adam Campbell were cast to play the members of Beatles. The plan was to use 16 Beatles songs in the film, which was to use cutting-edge motion-capture technology similar to Zemeckis' "Beowulf," "A Christmas Carol" and "Mars Needs Moms." Now that Zemeckis' "Mars Needs Moms" film bombed in theaters, Disney is said to want nothing to do with "Yellow Submarine" and considers the project dead. Zemeckis has been shopping the movie to other studios, but word is that he will likely abandon the project.
Premiere
Release
The budget for Yellow Submarine was 250,000 pounds. It was released in the United Kingdom on July 17, 1968 and opened in the United States on November 13 of the same year. It was released in spherical 35mm with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. However, for the U.S. Release, approximately five minutes of footage was cut to a running time of 85 minutes. It wasn't until restoration work was done in 1998 that the footage was restored for the U.S. Release, which included the "Hey Bulldog" sequence. At the time of restoration, the producers of the DVD were granted permission to remix the music (songs) and went back to the Beatle's original four-track work tapes and put together true multi-track masters for all fifteen songs. There was some controversy over this, but it is said the surviving Beatles were very pleased with the results. A 5.1 track was developed for that mix.
Photos from the premiere.
Merchandising was heavy for the release of Yellow Submarine. Along with different music albums, florescent clothing, mod necklaces, comics and magazines were issued and were extremely popular. Today, original collectible material from the film's original release can earn thousands of dollars at auctions.
(clockwise) Official magazine, comic book, gift book, official U.S. Postal stamp, coloring book
The legend of the Beatles marks true music history and the changing world of the 1960's in which teen culture took a giant leap forward. Yellow Submarine is the product of years of work and over a year of restoration, finally available on the Blu-ray format.
One of the last photos of The Beatles together
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All materials in this and other Silver Screen columns are copyright their respective studios, Blu-ray.com and the collection of Robert Siegel. Special thanks to The Beatles fan club and William Beatty, Beatles memorabilia collector. Many graphics on this page have been painstakingly corrected and cleaned, and are internet tracked. Please ask for permission to use any graphic by emailing robert@blu-ray.com. This edition all artwork, publicity and production photos/drawings original copyright MGM/United Artists Pictures and are used for informative and promotional use.
