As the music world waits for Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back to tell the definitive story of how John, George, Paul and Ringo spent January 1969, Cinema Paradiso looks back to the heyday of British popular music on the big screen.
For most British teenagers, rock'n'roll entered their movie consciousness when Bill Haley and His Comets sang 'Rock Around the Clock' over the opening and closing credits of Richard Brooks's school drama, Blackboard Jungle (1955). The following year, they saw Little Richard belting out the title track to Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956) before their parents disapproved of Elvis Presley snaking his hips in Richard Thorpe's Jailhouse Rock (1957).
Seeing which was the wind was blowing, British producers rushed to get homegrown pop stars in front of the cameras. They may not have been as edgy as Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent or Jerry Lee Lewis, but they could be made to seem as wholesome as Pat Boone or Fabian and as worthy of a scream or a swoon as Elvis and the Everly Brothers. The problem revealed by films like Denis Kavanagh's Rock You Sinners (1957), however, was that stars Tony Crombie and Art Baxter were more jazzmen than rockers, while Rory Blackwell lacked screen presence and musical potency. Interestingly, Crombie later found himself in Ramsey Herrington's The Nudist Story (aka Pussycats Paradise, 1960).
Now aged 96 and living in retirement in Norfolk, South African-born Dennis Lotis was the first British singing star to find his way into films in the 1950s. As Ronnie Baker, he was depicted as a Frank Sinatra-like bobbysoxer idol in William Fairchild's The Extra Day (1956). The following year, he had the distinction of topping the Melody Maker poll for Top Male Singer. Yet he never made the UK Singles Chart, despite guesting alongside up-and-comer Terry Dene in Don Sharp's coffee bar saga, The Golden Disc (1958).
Dene had made his name at the 2i's Coffee Bar in Soho's Old Compton Street. Opened in 1956, the café basement also nurtured such talents as Tommy Steele, Adam Faith and Cliff Richard. All would follow the example of Elvis Presley in seeking to reinforce their chart success on the silver screen, when not appearing on such TV shows as producer Jack Good's Six-Five Special, which would cross over to cinemas when Alfred Shaughnessy's 6.5 Special (1958) provided a showcase for former child star Petula Clark (more of whom anon) and Skiffle king Lonnie Donegan, who had first been seen at the Wood Green jazz club featured alongside Chris Barber in Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz's documentary short, Momma Don't Allow (1956), which can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on the BFI's excellent 2006 Free Cinema (1952-1963) collection.
The First Wave
The first inkling that a new sound was about to sweep cinema came in Terence Fisher's Kill Me Tomorrow (1957), when Tommy Steele cameo'd as himself to sing 'Rebel Rock' in the coffee bar where reporter Bart Crosbie (Pat O'Brien) is making a pact with the devil in a gritty crime drama. Such was the demand to see Britain's first rocker on the big screen, however, that Gerard Bryant's The Tommy Steele Story (1957) was rushed into cinemas to cash in on the craze. By all accounts, the script took future Carry On scribe Norman Hudis a whole 10 days to write, while Lionel Bart and Mike Pratt reportedly penned the 14 songs in a week. Shooting lasted a mere three weeks at a cost of £15,000 to chronicle the rags to riches rise of the Bermondsey boy who has taken the famous Café de Paris by storm.
The rock edge was smoothed away, as Steele found himself courting the family market in Gerald Thomas's The Duke Wore Jeans (1957), which saw him play the dual roles of married aristocrat Tony Whitecliffe and lookalike commoner Tommy Hudson in a comedy of errors set in the Ruritanian kingdom of Ritalla. Spain provided the setting of John Paddy Carstairs's Tommy the Torreador (1959), which lands sailor Tommy Tomkins in a bullring after being duped by the scheming Cadena (Sid James). Co-starring with Disney loanee Janet Munro, Steele scored a silver disc for the accompanying EP, which contained the ever-popular ditty, 'Little White Bull'.
There's a whiff of the plot for John Landis's The Blues Brothers (1980) in Don Sharp's It's All Happening (1963), as Billy Bowes, a talent scout at the KLO record company, stages a benefit concert for the orphanage in which he had grown up. Steele's co-star was Angela Douglas, who had made her mark in Clive Donner's Some People (1962), a youth club drama that combined catchy pop, youthful angst and the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.
Having already taken a non-singing role in Lewis Gilbert's Light Up the Sky! (1960), Steele became more of an entertainer than a rocker. He tried his luck in Hollywood in George Sidney's Half a Sixpence, Norman Tokar's Happiest Millionaire (both 1967) and Francis Ford Coppola's Finian's Rainbow (1968) before returning to Blighty to join Stanley Baker in James Clavell's Where's Jack? (1969), which recalled the 18th-century battle of wits between crook Jack Shepperd and 'Thief-Taker General' Jonathan Wild. Steele sang on screen for the last time as a discarded toy seeking the protection of a department store Santa in Robert Reed's Quincy's Quest (1979).
A graduate of the Itala Conti Stage School, Anthony Newley debuted with a bit part in Laurence Olivier's Henry V (1944) before landing the title role of Darrell Catling's children's serial, The Adventures of Dusty Bates (1947). He cemented his child star reputation as the Artful Dodger alongside Alec Guinness's controversial Fagin in David Lean's adaptation of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (1948). But anyone using the Cinema Paradiso Searchline will notice that Newley and musicals were comparative strangers until he joined the ensemble assembled by J. Lee Thompson for his updating of J.B. Priestley's The Good Companions (1957).
Newley hopped on the rock'n'roll bandwagon in John Gilling's Idle on Parade (1959), an adaptation of a William Camp novel that was inspired by Elvis Presley being drafted into the US Army and which saw rocker Jeep Jackson (Newley) keep sneaking out of barracks to play gigs set up by his ambitious manager, Herbie (Sid James). By adopting a Cockney accent to sing his five songs, Newley not only changed the course of his career, but also influenced the singing style of a young David Jones, who would find fame as David Bowie, as Sonia Anderson confirms in her documentary, Bowie (2016).
Suddenly Newley was a pop star and he won a Grammy in 1963 for 'What Kind of Fool Am I?', which he penned with songwriting partner, Leslie Bricusse. He also teamed with John Barry to write Shirley Bassey's theme for Guy Hamilton's Goldfinger (1965). Indeed, there seemed to be no stopping Newley, as he headlined the cult TV series, The Strange World of Gurney Slade (1960), which is available from Cinema Paradiso on high-quality DVD and Blu-ray.
Next, he conquered the stage by receiving a Tony nomination for his performance in Stop the World - I Want to Get Off, which he co-wrote with Bricusse, and which was filmed by Philip Saville in 1966. Five years later, Newley and Bricusse would enjoy their biggest screen hit with Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), which was inspired by a story by Roald Dahl.
While Newley didn't enjoy the experience of playing Matthew Mugg alongside Rex Harrison in Richard Fleischer's Doctor Dolittle (1967), he fared better as Daniel Quilp in Michael Tuchner's Mister Quilp (1975), which saw Newley return to Dickens in a musicalisation of The Old Curiosity Shop. It would prove to be his last venture in this direction and it's a shame it's not currently on disc, along with the self-directed Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (1969), an X-rated romp in which Newley teamed with his second wife, Joan Collins
Adapted from a West End play that Wolf Mankiewicz had based on his own Daily Express article, Val Guest's Expresso Bongo (1959) openly lampooned Tommy Steele's rapid rise and the grasping machinations of impresarios like Larry Parnes. Having debuted as tearaway Curley Thompson singing 'Living Doll' in Terence Young's Serious Charge (1959), Cliff Richard curled his lip as Bongo Herbert trying to make it on Soho's coffee bar scene with the help and hindrance of sharkish promoter Johnny Jackson (Laurence Harvey). As Harvey had just played Joe Lambton in Jack Clayton's adaptation of John Braine's 'angry young man' novel, Room At the Top (1959), the film coasted on the British New Wave that had its roots in the 'kitchen sink' plays that had taken audiences by storm at the Royal Court Theatre.
There was more of the toned-down Elvis feel to the Sidney J. Furie duo of The Young Ones (1961) and Wonderful Life (1964). Recyling an idea that had seemed old hat when Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney used it for one of their 'barnyard musicals', the former sees Nicky (Richard) and his pals putting on a show to prevent property tycoon Hamilton Black (Robert Morley) from taking over their West End youth club. With The Shadows bringing some musical class to the colourful action, the film reinvented Cliff as someone parents could embrace. Ironically, it also gave its name to the groundbreaking BBC alternative comedy series, The Young Ones (1982-84), which dismayed a later generation of concerned grown-ups.
The same easy-going nature was applied by Peter Yates to Summer Holiday (1963), in which Don and his mechanic pals Cyril (Melvyn Hayes). Steve (Teddy Green) and Edwin (Jeremy Bulloch) borrow a red London double-decker bus with the intention of driving to the South of France. However, having picked up Sandy (Una Stubbs), Angie (Pamela Hart) and Mimsie (Jacqueline Daryl), who form the Do-Re-Mi group, the destination becomes Athens after runaway singer Barbara (Lauri Peters) comes aboard.
Once again, The Shadows went along for the ride to provide the twanging backing in Wonderful Life, as they and waiter Johnnie drift off to the Canary Islands and become stuntmen on the movie set where Lloyd Davis (Walter Slezak) is directing Jenny Taylor (Susan Hampshire) in her latest picture. The boys returned to Spain for Sidney Hayers's Finders Keepers (1966), which sees Cliff attempt to keep an accidentally dropped American missile out of the hands of the mysterious Mr X (John Le Mesurier).
Following a marionette cameo at the out of this world Swinging Star nightclub in David Lane's Thunderbirds Are Go (1966), Cliff left The Shads behind (although they did reunite on his long-running BBC TV series) to proclaim his born-again Christian faith in James F. Collier's Two a Penny (1967), a drama sponsored by Evangelist Billy Graham's World Wide Pictures that sees art student Jamie Hopkins (Cliff) swindle his mother (Dora Bryan), deal drugs and force himself upon girlfriend Carol (Ann Holloway) before seeing the light.
This was still burning bright, when Cliff took a tour of some biblical landmarks in Collier's His Land (1969). But he kept religion out the 1972 teleplay, The Case - a mystery that teams Cliff with Olivia Newton-John - and David Askey's Take Me High (1973), in which financier Tim Matthews heads to Birmingham to get one over on rival Hugh Flaxman (Anthony Andrews) by helping Sarah (Deborah Watling) launch her Brum Burger. This underdog saga seemed set to mark a curious end to Cliff's screen career before he put in a cameo as a busker in John Luton's take on Ray Cooney's farcce, Run For Your Wife (2012).
Adam Faith started out playing beatnik Dave in Edmond T. Gréville's Beat Girl, who frequents the Off Beat coffee bar in Soho, where Jennifer Linden (Gillian Hills, who became a top Yé-Yé singer in France) seeks escape from her stifling life with father Paul (David Farrar). In addition to boasting John Barry's first film score, this landmark Beat picture was also released after the British censor had demanded several cuts, which delayed its release until after John Guillermin's Never Let Go (both 1960), in which Faith appears as car thief Tommy Towers, who steals cars to order for London garage owner Lionel Meadows (Peter Sellers) and picks on the wrong mark in struggling cosmetics salesman John Cummings (Richard Todd).
Faith was on the wrong side of the law again as Harry Jukes in Leslie Norman's Mix Me a Person (1962), as barrister Philip Bellamy (Donald Sinden) calls in psychiatrist Anne Dyson (Anne Baxter) to assess the man on trial for the murder of a policeman on a quiet country road. He was more family friendly in Gilbert Gunn's What a Whopper (1961), as hard-up writer Tony Blake fakes a photo of the Loch Ness Monster in order to drum up interest in his latest manuscript and heads to the Highlands to exploit his claim, only to encounter salmon-poaching landlord Harry Sutton (Sid James).
But Faith quit film acting in the early 1960s and next appeared as Ronald Bird in the hit TV series, Budgie (1971-72), a classy offering from Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall that saw the eponymous anti-hero pulling scams with Glaswegian mobster Charles Endell (Iain Cuthbertson). Guest slots followed in McCloud (1972-77), Minder (1979-94) and Murder in Mind (2001-02), alongside film supports in Adrian Lyne's Foxes and Tom Clegg's McVicar (1980) and the lead of Frank Carver opposite Zoë Wanamaker's Tessa Piggott in Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran's sitcom, Love Hurts (1992-94).
All That Jazz
Several British singers had basked in the movie spotlight in the pre-rock era, most notably Forces Sweetheart Vera Lynn, who had headlined three tuneful features to keep the home fires burning during the Second World War. Cinema Paradiso users can enjoy Philip Brandon's We'll Meet Again (1942), Gordon Wellesley's Rhythm Serenade (1943) and Walter Forde's One Exciting Night (1944). But Lynn wasn't a natural actress like American counterpart Judy Garland or predecessor Jessie Matthews, whose musical highlights area available to rent in the form of Network's six-volume Jessie Matthews Revue series.
Crooning sensations Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra had started out singing with big bands and British dance band leaders like Billy Cotton and Henry Hall did make the odd screen appearance. As they had their backs to the camera, however, their natural home was radio and there was no UK equivalent to Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey in Alfred E. Green's The Fabulous Dorseys (1947) or Glenn Miller, who was memorably played by James Stewart in Anthony Mann's exemplary biopic, The Glenn Miller Story (1953).
The odd jazz musician did come to the fore, however. Having topped the charts with 'Stranger on the Shore' in 1961, clarinetist Acker Bilk became a familiar face on the big and small screen. He joined rockers Gene Vincent and Chubby Checker and in Richard Lester's debut feature, It's Trad, Dad!, before playing the leader of a prison jazz band in Peter Bezencenet's crime caper, Band of Thieves (both 1962). He also later joined The Spencer Davis Group in Hugh Gladwish's The Ghost Goes Gear (1966), which is surely a must for a UK disc release. Hint, hint!
Trumpeter Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen also guested in It's Trad, Dad! and they went on to join Gene Vincent and acts from producer Joe Meek's roster in Lance Comfort's Live It Up (1963), which was followed by Be My Guest (1965) and saw David Hemmings reprise the role of aspiring rocker Dave Martin alongside Steve Marriott and Mitch Mitchell, who would respectively find greater fame with The Small Faces and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The Small Faces also had a key role in Jeremy Summers's Dateline Diamonds (1965), a smuggling caper that was based around the kind of pirate radio station that Richard Curtis recalled with such fondness in The Boat That Rocked (2009).
An accomplished musician who was viewed as something of a novelty act, Cherry Wainer was the South African Hammond organ player for Lord Rockingham''s XI, who scored a big hit in 1958 with 'Hoots Mon'. She can be seen in Michael Winner's Climb the Wall (1960), alongside pianist Russ Conway and singer Craig Douglas in a Renown triple bill that also includes the documentaries, London Entertains (1951) and Calling All Cars (1954). Douglas (who topped the bill of the first major touring show featuring The Beatles) also guests on Lance Comfort's crime drama, The Painted Smile (1962), which is available from Cinema Paradiso on an Odeon double bill with the same director's Rag Doll (1961), which starred singer-turned-actor Jess Conrad, who had distanced himself from his clean-cut crooner image with a sneering turn in Sidney J. Furie's study of juvenile delinquency, The Boys (1960).
Conrad is played by Nigel Harman in Nick Moran's Telstar: The Joe Meek Story (2008), which stars Con O'Neill as the eponymous writer-producer. Amusingly, Conrad himself guested as impresario Larry Parnes, whose charges in the early days of British rock'n'roll included Tommy Steele, Marty Wilde, Billy Fury, Vince Eager, Dickie Pride, Duffy Power, Johnny Gentle, Terry Dene and Lance Fortune. Conrad would later cameo in Julien Temple's Sex Pistols romp, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), and the same director's take on Colin MacInnes's cult novel about 1950s London, Absolute Beginners (1986), which features David Bowie as Vendice Partners.
Robert Hartford-Davis showcased The Nashville Teens and The Graham Bond Organisation in the novelty comedy, Gonks Go Beat (1964). Some time in the future, Planet Earth is divided between the peoples of Ballad Isle, who prefer Easy Listening music and conservative fashions, and the groovy folks of Beatland, who are more far out. Each year, Mr A&R (Frank Thornton) organises an annual song contest, but some watching aliens fear things are about to get out of control and send Wilco Roger (Kenneth Connor) to mediate. Terrified of being sent to Planet Gonk, where a race of puppets listens to Dixieland Jazz, Wilco encourages a Romeo and Juliet-like romance between Beatlander Steve (Iain Gregory) and Ballad Islander Helen (Barbara Brown).
If this kitsch curio rings your bell, you should also keep an eye out for Val Guest's Toomorrow (1970), which has Olivia Newton-John as a member of the eponymous student band whose pioneering 'tonaliser' instrument is picked up by a race of aliens who need the combo to play a life-saving gig for their planet. Newton-John, of course, would later team with John Travolta in Randal Kleiser's Grease (1978) before moving on to co-star with Hollywood musicals legend Gene Kelly in Robert Greenwald's Xanadu (1980).
Novelty movies featuring pop stars were very much in vogue in the Swinging Sixties. Producer Milton Subotsky had been a driving force in putting rock on screen Stateside, with famed DJ Alan Freed introducing the acts in Will Price's Rock, Rock, Rock! (1957). Before his Amicus company came to specialise in sci-fi and horror (use the Cinema Paradiso searchline to find out more), Subotsky hired Gordon Flemyng to direct Just For Fun (1963), which packed 28 songs into a story about the formation of The Teenage Party in order to fight a general election. But to capture the flavour of the British pop scene in the middle of the decade, join DJ Sam Costa for Douglas Hickox's jukebox extravaganza, Just For You (1964), which finds room for The Merseybeats, Peter and Gordon, The Bachelors, The Applejacks, The Chiffons and good old Freddie and The Dreamers.
Freddie Garrity and also took the lead in Duncan Wood's The Cuckoo Patrol (1967). Made in 1965, but shelved for two years, this madcap caper sees Freddie and bandmates Bernie Dwyer, Derek Quinn, Pete Birrell and Roy Crewdson form part of a scout troupe being led by Wick (Kenneth Connor). In the course of their misadventures, they get involved with a tag wrestling team, some girl guides and robbers Dicko (Victor Maddern) and Yossie (Arthur Mullard), who meet their match in the sports section of the Marshall and Snodgrass department store.
This kind of comic caper had also served such versatile performers as Joe Brown. He had impressed in Michael Carreras's What a Crazy World (1963), which shows Alf Hitchens (Joe Brown) having a tough time at home with parents Sam (Harry H. Corbett) and Mary (Avis Bunnage) and an on-off relationship with Marilyn (Susan Maughan). However, he and pal Herbie Shadbolt (Marty Wilde) have plans to make it in the music world. Indeed, Brown had become a sufficiently familiar face to merit a cameo in Val Guest's The Beauty Jungle (1964), which stars Janette Scott as a Bristol holiday-maker who is groomed for pageant success by scoop-chasing journalist Ian Hendry.
Brown hooked up with fellow guest star Sid James in Sidney Hayers's Three Hats For Lisa (1965), a whistlestop tour of Swinging London that begins when French film star Lisa Milan (Sophie Hardy) arrives at Heathrow. She is swept off by huge fan Johnny Howjego (Joe Brown), who agrees to help her collect souvenir hats - a bowler, a busby and a policeman's helmet - with friends Sammy (Dave Nelson), Flora (Una Stubbs) and cabbie Sid. Michael Caine recalled this period in David Batty's documentary, My Generation (2017), and Caine and Brown would later rub shoulders in Neil Jordan's crime classic, Mona Lisa (1986). This was produced by the HandMade Films company that Brown's pal, George Harrison, had set up in order to bail out Terry Jones's Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979).
Harrison and his bandmates had covered Frank Ifield's 'I Remember You' during their Hamburg days and the Australian made his sole cinematic appearance in Christopher Miles's Up Jumped a Swagman (1965). He proved himself a decent actor, as singer Dave Kelly comes to London and romances model Melissa Smythe-Fury (Suzy Kendall), without realising that pub landlord's daughter Patsy (Annette André) also has a crush on him.
Curiously, Petula Clark also has a Beatle connection. She first appeared on the radio at the age of nine and spent the war years touring the country with Julie Andrews. Billed as 'the British Shirley Temple', the 12 year-old Clark made her screen debut in Maurice Elvey's Medal For the General (1944) and quickly became the country's favourite child star, most notably opposite Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison in the four Ken Annakin comedies contained in The Huggett Collection.
Around this time, Clark started recording for her father's Polygon record label and she became a major star on the continent. In 1964, she scored her biggest hit with 'Downtown', which has featured on many a movie soundtrack. But Clark's film appearances became rarer as her singing celebrity grew. She joined Tommy Steele and Fred Astaire in Finian's Rainbow and took the Greer Garson role alongside Peter O'Toole in Herbert Ross's musical take on Goodbye, Mr Chips (1969). The same year, she happened to be in Montreal at the time of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's bed-in and joined the chorus on 'Give Peace a Chance', whose recording is chronicled in Alan Lysaght and Paul McGrath's John and Yoko: Give Peace a Song (2006).
The Mersey Scene
As sailors brought the latest releases across the Atlantic, the port of Liverpool had long been ahead of the musical curve. Its heyday would come with the Merseybeat boom of the early 1960s. But a couple of Scousers had already made an impression on the nation before anyone outside the city had heard of The Cavern Club.
Having popped up as Elmer alongside fellow Liverpudlian Arthur Askey in John Baxter's comic Western, Ramsbottom Rides Again (1956), Frankie Vaughan made his cinematic mark as Dave Wyman in Herbert Wilcox's These Dangerous Years (1957). Wyman's gang-leading would-be rocker has his rough edges knocked off during National Service and learning the hard way would be the subject of another collaboration between Wilcox and writer Jack Trevor Story, as Gibraltarian fisherman Carmelo (Vaughan) finds it tricky to make his fortune when he travels to London in Wonderful Things! (1958).
Pamela Bower chipped in on Story's script for The Heart of a Man, which sees sailor Frankie Martin (Vaughan) undertake a series of odd jobs in the hope of earning £1000, only to wind up landing a recording contract. Wilcox's wife, Anna Neagle, produced the picture and the duo who had entertained British audiences since the 1930s bowed out as director and star with The Lady Is a Square (both 1959), in which classical-loving widow Frances Baring (Neagle) lets daughter Joanna (Janette Scott) know in no uncertain terms that she disapproves of her liaison with popular singer Johnny Burns (Vaughan).
Hollywood came calling when Vaughan got to co-star with Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand in George Cukor's Let's Make Love (1960). He was also teamed with Juliet Prowse in David Butler's The Right Approach (1961). But Vaughan was among the crooners to be caught in the Mersey wave and he had to settle for providing singing Soho support to comedians Lance Percival and Willie Rushton in Douglas Hickox's It's All Over Town (1964), which also featured Acker Bilk, The Springfields, The Bachelors and The Hollies.
Also hailing from the Pool, Pre-Fab rocker Billy Fury headlined Michael Winner's Play It Cool (1962) as Johnny Universe, a struggling singer whose bandmates agree to help runaway heiress Ann Bryant (Anna Palk) defy her father, Sir Charles (Dennis Price), and search for her missing boyfriend. Helen Shapiro, Bobby Vee and Shane Fenton (aka Alvin Stardust) shared the singing duties. But Fury had been surpassed by the members of Brian Epstein's fabled stable by the time he made I've Gotta Horse (1965), which traded on the singer's love of animals and co-starred his own racehorse Anselmo as Armitage, the thoroughbred Fury sneaks backstage while preparing for a show with his backing band, The Gamblers.
After having undergone heart surgery, Fury made a fine return to the screen as Stormy Tempest in Claude Whatham's That'll Be the Day (1973), which starred fellow Dingle boy Richard Starkey (aka Ringo Starr) in a gritty tale inspired by the Mersey scene that had seen Starr earn his spurs playing drums at holiday camps with Rory Storm and The Hurricanes. Co-starring was David Essex, who would reprise his role in Michael Apted's Stardust (1974), which followed Jim MacLaine's rock rise and fall during the 1960s and 70s, with Marty Wilde, Keith Moon and Dave Edmunds jamming along under the watchful eye of manager Mike Menary (Adam Faith).
Popular as Vaughan and Fury had been, no one had seen anything like Beatlemania, which erupted in the spring of 1963. Cinema Paradiso has already covered the careers of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in The Beatles in Film. But no survey of British pop pictures would be complete without a mention of the Mop Tops.
There are numerous documentaries about The Beatles, with the pick being Bob Smeaton and Geoff Wonfor's 674-minute record, The Beatles: Anthology (1995), which includes exclusive recollections from Paul, George and Ringo. Despite some support for Sam Taylor-Johnson's Nowhere Boy (2009), the best dramatisation of the band's formative years remains Iain Softley's Backbeat (1993), which is available from Cinema Paradiso in a Special Edition that is packed with extras. But the most enduring Beatle film of them all is undoubtedly A Hard Day's Night (1964).
Director Richard Lester had won the affection of John Lennon less through his feature bow, It's Trad, Dad!, than through his collaboration with The Goons. Lester had worked with Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers on the ITV sketch shows, The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d, A Show Called Fred and Son of Fred (all 1956 and, sadly, mostly lost), as well as on the Oscar-nominated short, The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959). Thus, when manager Brian Epstein decided to put his charges on the silver screen, it was the tone of the latter that dictated the surreal irreverence of Alun Owen's 'day in the life' screenplay. The influence of Buster Keaton, Federico Fellini, Free Cinema and the nouvelle vague can also be felt on the monochrome action (which would play a huge role in shaping the modern music video), as the Fabs go in search of their missing drummer in the hours before a TV show.
When United Artists came calling for a follow-up after Owen and score producer George Martin had landed Oscar nominations, Ringo found himself the centre of attention again after acquiring a ring belonging to a sacrificial cult led by Leo McKern. With the sequences in the Bahamas and Austria designed to lampoon the location-hopping of the James Bond franchise, Help! (1965) was a colourful romp that contained some excellent songs. But it lacked the acuity of its predecessor, as the Fabs started to feel the strain of the unprecedented celebrity depicted by Ron Howard in the Oscar-nominated documentary, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years (2016).
Following Epstein's death during 1967's Summer of Love, McCartney persuaded his bandmates to join him in co-directing the TV special, The Magical Mystery Tour (1967). Despite mixed reviews, the anarchic coach trip anticipated the zany style of Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-74), while its trippiness filtered through into George Dunning's epochal animation, Yellow Submarine (1968). John Clive, Geoffrey Hughes, Peter Batten and Paul Angelis were recruited to voice John, Paul, George and Ringo, who were content to pop up in a live-action coda. As Ajoy Bose and Peter Compton recall in The Beatles and India, they had spent part of the year at the Rishikesh ashram of Maharishi Manesh Yogi, while also focussing on their studio work and edging towards the realisation that their time was almost up.
Despite boasting an Oscar-winning song score, Michael Lindsay-Hogg's long-suppressed Let It Be (1970) appeared to be a record of The Beatles in meltdown. But Peter Jackson has unearthed another story from the 55 hours of restored footage and 140 hours of audio, and all shall be revealed when The Beatles: Get Back is released. It remains to be seen yet whether Disney will produce a DVD version of this six-hour 'documentary about a documentary', but fans everywhere will have their fingers crossed.
Even while they were still together, individual Beatles undertook solo screen projects during the 1960s. McCartney led the way with the score for John Boulting's The Family Way (1966), while Harrison followed suit with the underrated soundtrack to Joe Massot's Wonderwall (1968). In the interim, Lennon had reunited with Lester to play Private Gripweed in How I Won the War (1967), a non-musical comedy about laying a cricket pitch in the North African desert. As the singer of 'Act Naturally', Starr set the bar slightly higher and tested the waters in Richard Marquand's Candy (1968) and Joseph McGrath's The Magic Christian (1969), which co-starred Peter Sellers.
Having beaten their Cavern mates to the top of the British charts, Gerry and The Pacemakers struggled to match their creativity, despite recording the anthemic 'You'll Never Walk Alone', from the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein musical, Carousel (Henry King, 1956). In 1965, they headlined their own film, Jeremy Summers's Ferry Cross the Mersey, a battle of the bands saga that really should be available on disc. It offered a cameo to Cilla Black, who had been spotted by Epstein while working in the Cavern cloakroom. En route to becoming a beloved TV presenter, she teamed with David Warner in Peter Hall's Work Is a Four-Letter Word (1968). She was also superbly played by Sheridan Smith in Paul Whittington's Cilla (2014).
Having failed to land the Fab Four for The Yellow Teddy Bears (1963), Robert Hartford-Davis succeeded in snagging The Searchers for Saturday Night Out (1964), a gutsy account of five sailors and a passenger spending an eventful night in London, whose title song became the B side to the hit single, 'Needles and Pins'. The action was grimmer still in Vernon Sewell's Burke and Hare (1972), a biopic of the notorious Edinburgh bodysnatchers that featured songs by the Liverpool trio, The Scaffold, which was comprised of poet Roger McGough, comedian John Gorman and Paul McCartney's photographer brother, Mike McGear. But Liverpool wasn't the only UK city nurturing talent.
The British Invasion
Such was the nature of British show business in the 1960s that it didn't take long for the Merseybeat acts to gravitate towards that London. Naturally, the capital had its own thriving music scene, with The Rolling Stones emerging as the biggest rivals to The Beatles. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts resisted any attempts to coerce them into acting roles, but Cinema Paradiso users can still catch them in such diverse documentaries as Peter Whitehead's Charlie Is My Darling (1965), Michael Lindsay-Hogg's Rock and Roll Circus, Jean-Luc Godard's Sympathy For the Devil (aka One Plus One, both 1968), Leslie Woodhead's The Stones in the Park (1969), and Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin's Gimme Shelter (1970).
Jagger was eventually persuaded to venture in front of the camera as Turner, the reclusive rock star who falls into the orbit of violent gangster Chas Devlin (James Fox) in Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell's Performance (1970), which has plot elements that bear a passing resemblance to those in Robert Freeman's The Touchables (1968), which was based on a script by Cammell's brother, David. Two decades passed, however, between Jagger taking the title role in Tony Richardson's outback outlaw biopic, Ned Kelly (1970), and New Zealander's sci-fi thriller, Geoff Murphy's Freejack (1991).
Since then, Jagger has also taken roles in Sean Mathias's Bent (1997), Michael Apted's Enigma, George Hickenlooper's The Man From Elysian Fields (both 2001), Roger Donaldson's The Bank Job (2008) and Giuseppe Capotondi's The Burnt Orange Heresy (2019). By contrast, Keith Richards has restricted himself to guesting as Jack Sparrow's father, Captain Teague, in Gore Verbinski's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), which makes sense, as Johnny Depp so clearly based Sparrow's accent on that of the Stones guitarist.
Fellow Londoner Roger Daltrey, the lead singer of The Who, has also racked up the credits as an actor. During the 1960s, Daltrey, guitarist Pete Townshend, bassist John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon were content to focus on their music. But Daltrey so impressed in as the 'deaf, dumb and blind kid' in Ken Russell's take on Townshend's rock opera, Tommy (1975), that other roles quickly followed.
Russell cast Daltrey as Franz Liszt in his revisionist biopic, Lisztomania (1975), which also featured Ringo Starr as the Pope. Indeed, Starr and Moon would crop up in several films together, including Frank Zappa's 200 Motels (1971), That'll Be the Day and Ken Hughes's Sextette (1978), which proved to be Mae West's swan song. Meanwhile, Daltrey followed a grisly support in Richard Marquand's The Legacy (1978) and the rock-hard lead in Tom Clegg's McVicar (1980) by playing the producer of a seaside talent contest in Jack Grossman's Pop Pirates (1984), which can be found on the BFI's Children's Film Foundation Bumper Box.
Daltrey also featured in Michael Custance's The Little Match Girl (1986), Paul Oremland's Like It Is (1998) and Mark Hammond's Johnny Was (2006), while he notably played footballer Rodney Marsh alongside John Lynch as George Best in Mary McGuckian's Best (2000). Although it was inspired by Townshend's music, Franc Roddam's Quadrophenia (1979) didn't actually feature The Who. But several cast members of this Mod classic reunited for Ray Burdis's To Be Someone (2020), while Roddam's film also inspired Chris Green's The Pebble and the Boy (2021).
Although he's better known for his work with The Monkees, Davy Jones started acting in 1961 as Ena Sharples's grandson, Colin Lomax, in Coronation Street. The same year, fellow Lancastrian Peter Noone played Len Fairclough's son, Stanley. on the nascent soap before fronting Herman's Hermits, who were chart regulars in the mid-60s. Curiously, none of their feature outings - Alvin Ganzer's When the Boys Meet the Girls (1965), Arthur Lubin's Hold On! (1966) and Saul Swimmer's Mrs Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter (1968) - is available on a UK disc. However, Noone can be seen as the army captain alongside such Glam rockers as Mud, The Glitter Band and The Rubettes in Dennis Abey's Never Too Young to Rock (1976).
This wasn't a patch on Ringo Starr's Marc Bolan vehicle, Born to Boogie (1972), or Richard Loncraine's Slade in Flame (1975), but it's fun nonetheless. As is Betcher!, which sees Noone appear with a cycling Keith Chegwin in a 1971 David Eady short that can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on the BFI's COI Collection: Vol.4: Stop! Look! Listen! (2009).
The Hermits were probably more popular Stateside than they were in the UK and the same is true of The Dave Clark Five. Hailing from Tottenham, the group appeared more times on the prestigious Ed Sullivan Show than any of their British invasion rivals. As Clark had worked as a stuntman and extra on films as different as Lance Comfort's Pit of Darkness (1961), Gerry O'Hara's That Kind of Girl (1963) and Peter Glenville's Becket (1964), it was somewhat inevitable that the combo would make a movie of their own. Indeed, Clark plays a stuntman named Steve in John Boorman's Catch Us If You Can (1965), who cuts and runs with disillusioned model Dinah (Barbara Ferris) on a journey of discovery that culminates in a party at the Roman Baths in Bath. Commenting on the likes of Summer Holiday and A Hard Day's Night, this unusually melancholic odyssey anticipates the kind of song-filled road movie perfected by Chris Petit in Radio On (1982).
Elsewhere, it was possible to hear The Animals in Sidney Miller's Get Yourself a College Girl (1964), The Yardbirds in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966), Lulu in James Clavell's To Sir, With Love, Traffic in Clive Donner's Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (both 1967), Manfred Mann in Ken Loach's Poor Cow (1968), Vicki Carr in Desmond Davis's A Nice Girl Like Me and Melanie in Gerry O'Hara's All the Right Noises (both 1969). But, while they charted during the 60s, The Bee Gees would have to wait before their music took cinema by storm in John Badham's Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Sylvester Stallone's Staying Alive (1983), which starred John Travolta as Tony Manero.
As the Sixties wound down, the mood darkened as the Vietnam War and the events of 1968 cast a long shadow over the Summer of Love. The shift is anticipated in Peter Watkins's Privilege (1967), in which pop star Steven Shorter (Paul Jones) is exploited by manager Martin Crossley (Jeremy Child), PR Alvin Kirsch (Mark London), record label executive Julie Jordan (Max Bacon) and financial backer Andrew Butler (William Job) in order to placate the public and prevent them from focussing on the failings of a coalition government.
Even the joy of being a fan turned sour in Lindsay Shonteff's Permissive (1970), which sees Suzy (Maggie Stride) comes to London and becomes part of the entourage of the group Forever More, whose bassist, Lee (Alan Gorrie). is dating her friend, Fiona (Gay Singleton). However, her life goes off the rails after she gradually becomes one of the band's hard-living groupies. To paraphrase John Lennon in 'God' from the 1970 solo album, Plastic Ono Band, the dream was over.
