Filming “Help!” in the Bahamas • Day 2

FOUR BEATLES ON LOCATION IN THE BAHAMAS!

One day after the Beatles had landed in the Bahamas and already people were calling it Beatleland. To cover the first few days’ filming we had three RAVE reporters sending in stories. Victor Spinetti, the only actor who appeared in “Hard Day’s Night” and was asked to appear in “Beatles 2” sends us his from the actual set. Sue Brown, RAVE reporter over in Nassau, set up a special Beatles News Bureau for us. And Terry Huxton on location over there followed the boys wherever they went. So, three reporters add up to three stories for you. And three stories on the Beatles adds up to triple enjoyment!

VICTOR SPINETTI, ON SET, “BEATLES 2,” NASSAU

“Hello, Fellas!” Four heads turn as I say “hello” and they are probably the four most famous in the entertainment world. Each responds in highly individual manner. Paul: “Hear you’ve been out of work since ‘Hard Day’s Night’. Poor thing. Thought we’d give you another job!”

Then he breaks into a smile and says “Congratulations, Vic, on your success in New York. We hear it was fabulous!” I reply, “Got three fan clubs”. Paul and George: “Make us Hon. members. John and Ringo too.”

John: Says hello and says I look younger. (Hadn’t seen them for six months.) George says: “Glad to see you. Actually, my mother’s glad you are on this film with us. I phoned her just before I left and she said give my regards to Victor.”

Ringo flashes his rare smile and waves a welcome like a military salute, from the forehead out.

And so there we were as we flew off to start the boys’ second film, and it hadn’t seemed any time at all since I’d been with them before.

On the flight, the boys moved about and sat and talked to members of the unit. John was delighted with his new contact lenses. What a difference they made to his everyday living, he said. He had, apparently, found no difficulty wearing them. I asked him if it was a secret that he wore them. “Good Lord, no,” he replied. In that answer lies surely part of the reason for The Beatles’ fantastic and highly-deserved popularity. There is no shiftiness about them. They speak as they are. They drink, smoke and talk as openly as real human-beings, not bound by any code of false behaviour.

I’ll tell you what it’s like being with them. Go for a walk with a good friend. You might chat a while, pause, point to something that interests you, remark on it. Sit on a wall. Buy an ice-cream. Talk. Not talk. Make no effort and yet you enjoy yourself. You feel that at any minute something funny can be said.

You then go for a walk with a person you don’t know very well and immediately the effort is there. Shall I mention this? What is there to talk about that will interest? Dare not be silent; it would be thought that one is bored. Relief when it is over. Because neither of you know each other well, each is behaving falsely.

Well, the boys have the ability and the grace to behave always as if they know you well. They can be silent and still include you. They do this without effort on stage and off. Millions of girls think that all they have to do is meet a Beatle and they will be immediately accepted. This is true. The lads accept their popularity because it belongs to them; and what they give is completely of their own making.

It is a delight and a relief to find real, real people saying real live things and being truly alive. To be happy, moody, sad, loving, grumpy—to express these things, and above all to be talented and to share this talent. They are John, Paul, George and Ringo and to be really yourself takes a bit of doing. Try it.

SUE BROWN — BEATLES NEWS BUREAU, NASSAU

The Beatles are dead beat… in paradise. Up at 7 a.m. each morning, the mop-haired quartet are out for a swim, or taking secret dawn drives around the pretty sub-tropical island on lone sightseeing trips… plucking their own grapefruit from the garden of their private beach house for breakfast in the sunshine. But by 8 or 9 a.m. their gruelling day before the cameras begins. The production unit rumbles out of the pale yellow, quiet country club, The Balmoral—the temperature zings in the eighties and they’re on location for their new film, currently tabbed “Beatles Two”, but as yet still untitled.

The boys arrived in Nassau, capital of this British Colony, where about 25 per cent of their new film is to be shot, on Monday, by privately chartered BOAC Boeing 707, from London. Officials whipped them quietly off the Airport for the start of their whirlwind two-week visit.

Biggest disappointment is the firm instruction from no-nonsense young producer, Dick Lester: no sun tans allowed. Four bronzed Beatles just don’t fit in with the film script, declared publicity manager, Tony Howard. “But we’re having a job keeping them out of the sun . . .”

John, Paul, Ringo and George were soon equipped with large, floppy straw hats from the native straw market in Nassau. Now, in between takes, they either sit under a shady palm tree, or in an air conditioned car.

And there’s no chance of sneaking a quiet couple of days sun relaxation before leaving the islands. For after 36 hours back in London, the Beatles are off to the Austrian Alps for more work on their film.

The second film is also being produced by Walter Shenson, for United Artists distribution—probably by the end of August or September.

The boys have had no chance to go to any of the dozens of calypso throbbing native night spots . . . but fully intend to sample the night life before going back to England.

The rule so far has generally been early to bed and early to rise. They have a swim each evening after their tiring day’s work.

“There has not been much time for social doings—they’re so dead beat at the end of a day’s work,” said Tony Howard. “The heat has been getting them down a little—it takes time to get used to the intensity of the sun here.“

As the boys are filming in and around Nassau, the fans have had plenty of opportunity to see their idols—but they have been very orderly crowds, giving the camera crews no trouble at all.

In the film, which is an adventure chase, with Ringo as the target of a gang and the rest of the Beatles trying to protect him, their co-star will be newcomer, Eleanor Bron.

There was also something of a crowd clash when the Queen Mother made a one-hour visit on her way home to England from Jamaica. Immediately after her departure from Nassau, the Beatles were out and about on their bicycles filming some more shots.

TERRY HUXTON—AT LOCATION, NASSAU

Although the Beatles special BOAC charter flight was not due in at Nassau’s International Airport until 8.15 p.m., thousands of faithful fans had been waiting for their idols since dawn. But the Beatles, aided by local officials and police, gave them the slip.

The boys were waived past the normal customs clearance and bundled from the tarmac into a waiting limousine which sped them to a Press conference at the Emerald Beach Hotel. “Which one are you?” a Miami newspaper woman asked Paul McCartney.

“Me? Oh, I’m Roger, and don’t forget that,” he replied. “Which one of you is John?” asked a radio announcer who was trying to tape the conference. “He is,” said Ringo, pointing at George frantically.

After a hectic 20 minutes of rapid-fire questions, fans started banging away at the glass doors of the conference hall and screaming for their favourite Beatles. Twice the doors were forced open and a few rushed in, only to be ejected by the police. When it was all over a reporter asked: “Where are you going now?” “Well, I don’t know about the others, but I’m going to bed,” answered George and with that the Beatles rose and left by a back door. Four enterprising fans managed to get into the Press conference by using a high school pass. Their first act after the boys had left, was to snatch up their glasses. “Look at what I also got,” one cried, “Ringo’s cigarette ash and his napkin!”

Another held a glass up proudly and announced it was George’s. “But it’s only plain ‘Coke,’ nothing stronger.”

Before going to bed, the Beatles went for a quick swim in the moonlit ocean. They have their private beach just outside the luxury cottage which they share while filming in Nassau. The place is guarded by police night and day.

Producer Walter Shenson’s seventy-strong unit didn’t get much time to relax in this millionaires’ playground. After an early production meeting by the side of a huge swimming pool in the grounds of the Balmoral Club, the unit’s headquarters, final preparations were made for the first day’s shooting at Bay Shore Marina and the Nassau Beach Hotel. At both places the unit found it hard to move for huge crowds of spectators had followed them around Nassau. At the luxurious Beach Hotel residents were busily shooting away at the Beatles and in the fracas two people were pushed into the hotel’s swimming pool. The Beatles jumped in as well — and fully clothed, but that is in the script.

When you read this most of the principal scenes involving Eleanor Bron, Leo McKern and Victor Spinetti, will have been shot at Cabbage Beach, the Royal Victoria Hotel, the Balmoral Club, the Caves, the old hospital at Prospect Ridge, the softball court at Lake Cunningham and in front of the post office.

For three of the Beatles this is their first visit to the Bahamas. George Harrison paid a private visit here in December.

Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, flew out with the film unit on the same plane and is staying at the Balmoral Club.

From RAVE Magazine – April 1965