Richard Lester, who directed the two truly great Beatle films, A Hard Day’s Night and HELP!, has received a Fellowship from the British Film Institute. With the recent death of Davy Jones, I’ve been hearing the old assertion that the Monkees TV show was based on AHDN, but I just don’t see it. HELP! was clearly the model for the series, with producers Raphelson and Schneider drawing inspiration from the fantasy of the boys living together in a quirky, colorful pad, full of groovy stuff.
I have high praise and thanks for author Ray Morton, and his book about the making of A Hard Day’s Night. Besides being a solid and thorough telling of the background and production of the movie, in A Hard Days Night: Music on Film Series, Morton did something no other writer on the subject has done — he gets the facts right about Prue Bury, and for that I am sincerely grateful. Ray Morton can be heard on Reject Radio talking about the movie and his book at this link. He comes in at 40:30 into the podcast.
Back in 2002, Rolling Stone had a piece about the Miramax DVD release of A Hard Day’s Night, and it has one of the classic promotional photos of the Beatles with (l-r) Pattie Boyd, Tina Williams, Prue Bury, and Sue Whitman.
By coincidence, and to my great amusement, that issue also had this item:
So the first time that Doug Pratt had a connection to Prue Bury, it was a different Doug Pratt!
This Doug Pratt often agrees with that Doug Pratt, but not always.
I’m glad to hear that “Starship Troopers” wasn’t on YOUR three favorite DVDs list!