The Collage Of Film Stars Used Within The "Beatles For Sale" Gatefold Sleeve

[Curtis Eagal]

The black-and-white collage opposite an image of The Beatles performing at the Coliseum in Washington DC on 11 February 1964 inside the gatefold cover of the "Beatles For Sale" album has been considered a forerunner of the later "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" tableau. However, the collage used in 1964 was not created by Robert Freeman for the photo-shoot, like the 1967 work where art designers were employed, but was intended to celebrate their earlier film debut in "A Hard Day's Night": the collage of film stars going back to the silent era was already existing at Twickenham Studios on a lobby wall near a staircase leading to the Viewing Theatre, where they had watched the footage of their 1964 film with director Richard Lester, as production was ongoing. So there was an element of personal nostalgia that fit the purpose of the collage, yet the way they peculiarly posed against it made every inclusion serendipitously seem oddly significant.

There were images of Albert Finney, particularly as a couple with Rachel Roberts from Karel Reisz's 1960 movie, "Saturday Night And Sunday Morning," the title paralleling lyrics from the Carl Perkins song "Honey Don't," covered with Ringo Starr providing lead vocal, after his tonsillitis prevented such a contribution for the prior album. A vaudeville act with Benny Hill and Tommy Steele from the 1960 wartime comedy "Light Up The Sky" (also known as "Skywatch") was featured. The ovular-topped image of Victor Mature and another actor wearing turbans and brandishing long rifles while riding on horseback is likely from the 1959 film "The Bandit of Zhobe" - Mature did several movies in the late '50s costumed in a turban, but had a beard in the 1956 predecessor "Zarak," and wore a light grey headdress for the later in 1959 "Timbuktu"; the name 'Zhobe' translates to Jobe, consistent with the Biblical character, whose name connotes being persecuted.

The image of Jayne Mansfield that seems to be turning out of Paul McCartney's head can be seen in imdb photos for the 1960 film "The Challenge," also known as "It Takes A Thief." The woman behind George Harrison has been identified as Simone Signoret; Twickenham Studios would later work with Roman Polanski on "Repulsion" and "Cul-De-Sac." The chin nearby belongs to Donald Pleasance, probably related to the 1961 film "The Wind Of Change." Towards the right beyond Ringo are Ian Carmichael and Janette Scott from the 1961 comedy "Double Bunk."

Honoring the silent film era is a prominent figure of a gypsy character from the 1922 film "The Bohemian Girl," starring Ivor Novello. And the female face from a bygone era near Starr's head can be seen in a variant image on Theda Bara's imdb bio page (only dated to circa 1917), wearing the same hat, with the same hairstyle, but from a different angle. Theda Bara was a Jewish girl from Cincinnati who developed her stage name by slightly changing real family names, but became the first fabricated film star, her publicist developing an exotic Goth mystique by declaring the name was an anagram for "Arab Death," that she had been born in the shadow of the Sphinx, and dabbled in the occult, being photographed with skulls, snakes and a raven-like crow. Bara with heavily kohled eyes was presented as a Vamp, with the catchphrase "Kiss me, my fool," as she ruined men's lives; she resolved to continue such roles as a moral lesson against society's sins, despite enduring abuse from a public believing that was her actual persona, acquiring a plethora of unsavory nicknames, including Purgatory's Ivory Angel, The Arch-Torpedo of Domesticity, and The Priestess of Sin. Her costumes were often revealing, later causing problems with censorship. Neighbors of her Tudor-style home on West Adams Avenue in Los Angeles were relieved when she moved, due to loud parties, but she sold it to Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, which meant no improvement for them.

At her peak from 1915 to 1918, she starred in 33 films. When Bara attempted to recast herself as an innocent Mary Pickford type, it was so unpopular her contract was terminated in 1919. She received about a thousand marriage proposals, but married in 1921 a British-American director named Charles Brabin, who was against her making a comeback. Her films stored in the Fox studio's warehouse vault in New Jersey were almost completely destroyed by a fire in 1937, with only about forty seconds of her performance in "Cleopatra" saved. Bara had her own personal copies stored, but when attempting to review them in 1940, she found the silver nitrate applied to the celluloid had disintegrated, obliterating the images. Following her death from abdominal cancer in April 1955, Theda Bara was laid to rest in the Great Mausoleum of the Forest Lawn Memorial in Glendale.

When The Beatles filmed "A Hard Day's Night," executive director Guido Coen had to learn crowd control. Administrative and facilities manager Caroline Tipple recalled, "Fans were hiding themselves in workshops and in the grounds, and a couple of girls hitchhiked from Scotland to see The Beatles"... "They didn't want any fuss and ate in the canteen, liking things like beans on toast." The band as actors were also observed drinking milk, although they had earlier declared they were not milk-drinkers, meaning wholesome abstainers. Twickenham was originally a roller skating rink, and became named initially for its St Margaret's location near London; adjacency to a railway required a rooftop lookout to switch an alert light from green to red when a train was passing, once 'talkies' arrived. The exterior of the four terraced houses seen in the 1965 film "Help!" was at St Margaret's on Aliso Road, the joined interior space was a Twickenham set; and the bar scene took place at Twickenham's own Turk's Head Pub.

[RJKe...@yahoo.com]

Amazing info! Thanks for sharing.

[Curtis Eagal]

You're very welcome, but I neglected to mention how the images within the gatefold sleeve worked together: the exterior color shots taken close to dusk in Hyde Park (near the Albert Memorial) featured the autumnal season, with Freeman's assistant holding a branch that had both green and orange leaves, so they would blur in the foreground with those contrasting colors; for the photo on the back of the sleeve, where the band is viewed from above surrounded by fallen leaves, Freeman himself climbed a tree to capture the desire angle. For the front sleeve image, where group wore their normal attire augmented by shawls, the trunk of a single tree blurred in the background was aligned with Ringo Starr's head.

This became something of a visual hint, as one opened the front flap to extract the vinyl disc concealed behind the collage photograph: the ovular top of the Victor Mature image could then be found to closely match the position and shape of Ringo's head from the front. Viewing it from a distance, allowing for myopic blurring, Mature's turban converts to a raised eyebrow, and his darkened shoulder area along with the turbaned head of his riding companion appear as cartoonish googly eyes, with a horse's ear ending an arching grin underneath - they must have noticed the resemblance to a depiction of Lewis Carroll's fantasy egg-man character, Humpty Dumpty. So the Fall season in the colorful exterior sleeve photos apparently played into this literary entity famously known to have 'had a great Fall,' raising the lyrical line from "I'm A Loser" that "Pride comes before a fall" from the level of a mere aphorism. And of course the track Ringo sings on the album was "Honey Don't," bearing the same initials as the fantasy character.

Many have wondered why their relentless cover of "Leave My Kitten Alone" was left unused from these sessions, while their cheesy version of "Mister Moonlight" was retained. In my book published last year, "The Quality Of Mersey," it was explained the subliminal content of the 'Kitten' track's searing instrumental section as they had recorded it was virtually duplicating similar thematic content provided by the two lead guitar parts from "Honey Don't" - so the subconscious impact would have been diminished by redundancy. By contrast, the organ part that was ultimately developed for "Mister Moonlight" bore a unique message required by the overall theme, in parallel with contemporary film title "Light Up The Sky," which was also featured in the collage. The complex layers of meaning were obscured by serendipity, making it seem the decisions made were superficial or simplistic, thereby rendering it unlikely people would immediately discern such esoteric intentions.

[RJKe...@yahoo.com]

"The Quality of Mersey"! Nice.

[Mack A. Damia]

On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 08:04:33 -0700 (PDT), "RJKe...@yahoo.com"

Very impressive!

https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Curtis-Eagal/e/B004GBFJYG/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_book_1

[Curtis Eagal]

Thanks, after deciding on it I found out it had already been used in other contexts, but titles can be duplicated.

https://www.amazon.com/The-Quality-of-Mersey/dp/B00FCIWLKM
Associated with an album by The Galliards

https://mikecar61.com/2020/10/19/poem-of-the-quality-of-mersey/

https://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=108294
An anthology of poetry compiled by Barry Woods

My own work is low on the disambiguation hierarchy, and the only known use of the title relating to The Beatles.

Shakespeare had a 400th anniversary of his supposed birthday on 23 April 1964, when the "Can't Buy Me Love" scene cavorting in a field was done, and John Lennon was helicoptered from the set to be honored at a literary luncheon. Richard Lester directed a tracking shot with the camera suspended on wires to capture Paul's face eclipsing an arc light for the "And I Love Her" sequence, providing the "star-cross'd" element characterizing the legendary romance of "Romeo And Juliet." United Artist executives viewing the dailies informed producer Walter Shenson about this 'mistake' of shooting into the light, only to receive the reply the cast and crew had labored the entire morning to achieve that very effect.

The group shortly afterwards celebrated the historic timing by acting out the 'Pyramus and Thisbe' scene from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for the "Around The Beatles" television special. There were many likely allusions to both Shakespeare and Carroll that were too subtle or obscure for the general public to notice: the album title "Beatles For Sale" correlates with "The Merchant Of Venice," which has lines including a "scarfed bark" and invocations like, "Bring forth your music into the air.- How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!" Carroll mused in his writing whether a "Beetle" on its back would like to be helped getting its feet on the ground again. Starr coined clever 'Ringo-isms' like "A Hard Day's Night" and "Tomorrow Never Knows," his alter ego 'Billy Shears' invented for Sgt. Pepper seems a truncated anagram variant of the name William Shakespeare.

[RJKe...@yahoo.com]

Wow! I never thought I'd read posts like yours in here again.
I'll look for a copy of your book.

[Curtis Eagal]

The series is on Amazon Kindle, printed on demand, the idea was to make each installment start after the previous release and proceed chronologically through the historical notoriety, touring, photo sessions, interviews, and tangential issues, then to focus on each release with a breakdown of how it was conceived, composed, arranged, performed, recorded, with some analysis of the musicology, lyrical content, and subliminal inferences (both vocal and instrumental) towards a definitive conjecture of intent. They had said they knew what they meant by their songs, although listeners could attach their own meanings; McCartney was quoted as saying he was always trying to do two things at once, and the first line of "I Saw Her Standing There" was perfect, since it says 'you know what I mean' when he was certain nobody really would.

I started with Book 2 in late 2009, about the "Please Please Me" album, the more mystical Book 1 was done years later, and covers the Carrollian era circa 1830 into 1980 (a 150-year span). Marian apparitions were a unifying theme, starting with Catherine Laboure. The dedication of the film "Help!" to Elias Howe's sewing machine patent suggests its registry on 10 September 1846, which was nine days before a single-day apparition at La Salette, France, with prophecies paralleling Nostradamus' regarding the papacy, the failure of the Bourbon Restoration, and Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew. The critical section is about The Beatles in Hamburg, at the same latitude as Liverpool, and synchronicities with the extensive apparitions at Garabandal, nearly directly south of Liverpool on the northern coast of Spain, which commenced on a birthday of McCartney's. From April 1968 further apparitions were witnessed nightly by thousands in Zeitoun, Egypt, at the Coptic Church built where the Holy Family was believed to have relocated to evade Herod's Slaughter of the Innocents directed against the Infant Christ; these continued into the early 1970s, when the Egyptian government began charging an admission fee. John Lennon in an early promotional piece invoked 'imitation Bible stuff,' which included the vision of a man appearing on a 'flaming pie' to give their band name. The story of Stuart Sutcliffe is recounted, including the events contributing to the untimely death of this promising artist Lennon recruited into being their bassist. In the "Free As A Bird" video, while other figures from the Sgt. Pepper tableau are brought to life in a pavilion, Sutcliffe's life-sized cutout remains a two-dimensional representation leaned against a wall.

It should be noted the title "And I Love Her" provides an acrostic anagram for the word 'HAIL,' and the guitar riff for the gentle ballad approximates verbalization of the phrase, "His Mother too" - the sweet intentions were symbolized by the set consisting of hexagonal blocks, like cells of a honeycomb.