Filming “Help!” in the Bahamas • Day 11

After three days of filming on the offshore islands, The Beatles returned to New Providence on March 5 to continue shooting scenes for “Help!“. The crew worked at multiple locations across the island, focusing on sequences in which John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison searched and called out for Ringo Starr, whose character had been taken prisoner.

In the evening, The Beatles had dinner with Sir Harold Christie, one of the largest landowners in the Bahamas, and Lady Christie.

The day-to-day filming activity in the Bahamas is drawn from “The Complete Beatles Chronicle” by Mark Lewisohn.

During the filming of “Help!” in the Bahamas, director Richard Lester shot additional footage of the Beatles racing cars around an empty quarry — the same location used in the film for the sequence in which Paul McCartney searches and calls for Ringo Starr. The footage was not included in the final cut of the film.

A brief excerpt of about five seconds survives in the original theatrical trailer for “Help!“, showing Paul at the wheel of a Triumph. The date on which Lester filmed this sequence is not documented.

We shot some incredible scenes that were never used. We’ve been trying to get hold of some of the outtakes. We rented sports cars which we used to drive around the island; I think they were Triumph Spitfires and MGBs. And as the police were all in the movie, we never had any trouble with speeding.

One day we found a disused quarry and started driving madly around it; skidding, doing doughnuts, going up the sides and spinning out. We made Dick Lester come and set up the camera so he could film us. He shot it with a fish-eye lens and it looked amazing: a big golden quarry with blue and red cars like little toys — going round the bottom and up the sides. It was never used in the film, but we could sure use it now.

We’ve since found that they destroyed all that footage. People were so short-sighted in the old days; it was that ‘they’ll never last’ concept.

From “The Beatles Anthology” book, 2000

‘The Boys,’ with their well-known mischievous streak decided to have some fun by wrecking the MG sports car they had been provided. Together they lifted the rear of the car up on two cement cinder blocks, one below each side of the back bumper, and then took delight in starting the motor, laying a brick on the gas pedal and pushing it off the cement blocks for the unattended car to gather speed crashing into a solid cement wall. This was done over and over. With each crash the boys leaped for joy squealing in delight.

John Rook – KQV Pittsburgh’s operations manager – From Observer-Reporter, January 26, 2014

Eleanor Bron Finds Favor With Beatles – Moptops Busy in Bahamas; Pal’s All-Technique Movie

From the hungry i in San Francisco with “The Establishment” to the BBC-TV show “Not So Much a Program More a Way of Life” to Nassau in the Bahamas as new leading lady to the Beatles. That’s the zigzagging course taken by Eleanor Bron.

“Already,” reports a member of the “Beatles Two” (tentative title) company, “she is the envy of every female teen-ager in Britain. Shooting commenced here Feb. 23 with Walter Shenson producing and Richard Lester directing. Shenson has not done a film since ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ but Lester has just completed ‘The Knack,’ which stars Rita Tushingham, in England. All scenes for the two weeks in the Bahamas are of course exterior; we have already shot on Balmoral Island and Huntington Hartford’s Paradise Isle. Also, we have been using the grounds of three of the most prominent hotels. The Nassau police are out in force to stop the traffic when necessary and to restrain crowds who just want to see the Beatles. To those skeptics who think the Beatles are through all I can say is, ‘Watch the tourists coming in from Miami and even New York just for the day…”

Bond Frustrated by Beatles!

“The weather is perfect for us and there is not a hotel room to be had in the island. This has caused the ‘Thunderball’ company to delay its arrival for the fourth James Bond movie until after our company leaves here for Austria March 10. We are using a local movie house to view the Eastman Color rushes arriving daily from the London Technicolor labs which are doing the processing.

“The cast and crew of 80 came here by chartered jet. We are shooting seven days a week so there is no rest for anyone. The Beatles are born actors and director Lester has achieved many shots with only one take. The script by Marc Behm — he was co-scripter on ‘Charade’ — is an original comedy adventure chase which sees Ringo as the target of an eastern sect and Miss Bron as an eastern priestess whose designs on the Beatles are positively outrageous. The remaining three Beatles spend their time trying to save Ringo from a fate worse than death.

“Besides Miss Bron, Victor Spinetti (the TV director in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’) has been set to play a power-drunk scientist and Leo McKern (he just finished ‘Moll Flanders’) the priest of the mythical sect.

“The Beatles already have recorded six songs. We should have a title soon and then John Lennon and Paul McCartney will write the title tune.”

From The Los Angeles Times, March 5, 1965

Going further

The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years

With greatly expanded text, this is the most revealing and frank personal 30-year chronicle of the group ever written. Insider Barry Miles covers the Beatles story from childhood to the break-up of the group.

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