The Beatles' first time on American television, live from Bournemouth Winter Gardens

George, Paul and John interviewed by American television backstage at the Winter Gardens

It took Bournemouth a few days to recover from The Beatles' two shows at the Winter Gardens on Saturday 16 November 1963. The town was somewhat shellshocked by the fervour which greeted the group who just a few weeks before had played a six-night summer season at the Gaumont in Westover Road to enthusiastic crowds.
But since then their fourth single She Loves You - released the Friday of their Gaumont run - had stormed to the top of the charts and just two weeks before the Winter Gardens date the Daily Mirror had coined the phrase 'Beatlemania' to describe the public reaction. 
Bournemouth felt the full force of Beatlemania and American television crews were on hand to record it. Those reports, first on CBS then NBC, gave US TV audiences a blueprint for how to react to The Beatles so that by the time they arrived in the States on 7 February 1964 to play the Ed Sullivan Show 50 years ago today (16 February) American teenagers were powerless to resist.
The sense that something big was in the offing runs right through the Bournemouth Times review of the Winter Gardens show. Published on 22 November 1963, reporter Tony Crawley had been in close company with the group during their Gaumont run in August, but bore witness to the new heights they were obviously scaling.
Here's what he had to say...

There was a bomb scare at the Winter Gardens minutes before the second Beatles show on Saturday night. A telephone call warned that a bomb had placed under the stage. Police searched and found nothing.
As it was, the place was full of bombs - the audience. The Beatles themselves were merely the time fuses. Very short fuses at that. As a game try was made to introduce the 'fab-tastic' wonders one by one, the audience literally exploded into a frenetic cascade of noise. One vast, seething, frightening mass of screams, shouts, sighs and sobs.
I've seen the incomparable Sammy Davis Jnr in cabaret and at the Palladium. I've seen the most emotional star of all, Judy Garland in a jam-packed palladiuym. I've seen Shirley Bassey rock the Winter Gardens thrice. And I've seen The Beatles on stage at least five times before.
But honestly, sincerely, I have never seen anything so frantic, frenzied or fantastic.
They had been immensely popular during their summer week's stay at the Gaumont. But their receptions were 50 times as great - 100 times as big as anything I've seen accorded to Cliff, Billy, Adam and the rest of the Beatle-squashed ilk. Never before has a pop audience in this "staid" town gone quite so mad, quite so wild.
Seats, for which they had queued over three nights, were forgotten. They stood and swayed and shouted and stamped and waved pictures, handkerchiefs, or just arms. They tore hair, wiped their eyes, fainted, were revived and continued.
The Beatles looked as shyly nonplussed as usual - just played and sang on. As usual they never did anything to incite anyone. No wiggles, no pelvis gyrations. They just played their music. Dahsing about in and out of the emotional throng of fans, three American TV film units captured the unbelievable scenes for America - and the world.
The Americans were racing against time and each other to be the first to feature Beatlemania in the States - by Monday or Tuesday! Then their news film will be sold to other countries, I was told.
The NBC feature was for the company's Panorama-like Huntley-Brinkley Report compered from two cities by Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.
William Sheehan of ABC interviewed the lads and then filmed them in action - with their fans' reaction - and Josh Darsa of CBS did likewise for a news programme.
"It's the sort of story we could hold on to for a week or more," he said. "But now the other networks are here, we'll have to rush it home pronto."
Also covering the event, and accompanying The Beatles to the Branksome Towers Hotel, and on the next day to Coventry, was a photoreporting team from Life magazine.
"I thought they'd only scream at the end of each song," added Margaret Gardiner from Life naively.
I'll let the three young screamers who sat behind me and pierced my ears good and hard, answer that one: "We didn't pay to hear The Beatles. We can hear them at home any time on discs. We paid to see them - to scream for them. We practised screaming last night without records."
So now you know.

Tony Crawley

:: Recently discovered in the NBC vaults, this broadcast audio file of Edwin Newman's film for the Huntley-Brinkley Report report filmed in Bournemouth and originally shown on Monday 18 November 1963. Sadly the footage has been lost, but the report shown on CBS Morning News with Mike Wallace on 22 November and rebroadcast on 10 December is widely available on YouTube.
:: The full story of The Beatles and their many connections to Bournemouth is told in Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth, available to order at a special price here.

Beatles' Bournemouth review 2

When the Rank Organisation booked The Beatles for a six-day summer season at the Gaumont in Bournemouth, hardly anyone at cinema knew who they were. But their kids did and The Beatles' arrival in town on 19 August 1963 caused great excitement with fans crammed into the alleyway by the stage door craning their necks for a glimpse of their idols as the soon-to-be Fab Four drew up in their Ford Zephyr.
By then the papers were on full Beatles alert and in Bournemouth it fell to already seasoned showbiz scribe Tony Crawley and the characterful photographer Harry Taylor to cover the group's stay in town, at the Palace Court Hotel, and keep abreast of the shows for the Bournemouth Times. As a weekly paper the Times could afford to circumspect than the somewhat breathless reviews of the Evening Echo's Stan Sowden.
This is how the Bournemouth Times reported those first shows in August 1963...

Cinema manager Charles Booth says he has a minute to relax, "Well, 45 seconds." He sits down. Somewhere between the pile of programmes, stack of autograph books, and the last mail delivery. (Most of the letters are marked "You're fab" on the envelope.)
"We've never had anything lie it," he says. "I've been in this business for 30 years. I've arranged film premieres, and big stage shows. But never have I experienced a week of demand and commotion like this."
Mr Booth is general manager of the Gaumont. And he'd right. His cinema has never witnessed such a commotion for visiting stars.
Not even Cliff Richard, Adam Faith or Billy Fury have won such screams, cheers, shouts, stomps, than is currently happening with ear-piercing regularity twice-nightly at this cinema.
The reason? Britain's most revolutionary and extraordinarily successful records stars: THE BEATLES.
It's their first visit to Bournemouth since virtually ruling the Top Ten for the last nine months. Holiday-makers, too , are making sure they don't miss the town's biggest attraction.
There are even dedicated fans on special one or two-day trips from - honest - as far away as Edinburgh and Hull.
Policemen on duty in the auditorium agree they have never heard anything like it.
Once the four, long, lean and lanky Liverpool lads come on-stage, real pandemonium sets in. Girls scream, jump up and down. Boys yell, stamp their feet. And hands are lifted outwards, upwards.
Fortunately, 99 per cent of the packed audiences (26,000 by tomorrow) know the Beatle songs by heart. I say fortunately, because no matter how much they pay, they don't hear them at the Gaumont.
Surprisingly, as these Liverpudlians don't claim to be the quietest quartet in the business. Their audio-histrionics, raucous voices, and electric guitars are loud, lusty - gutsy.
They yell, howl, stomp with gay abandon. So do their audiences.
The Beatles have won a sensational brand of success that has escaped even Cliff or Elvis.
Success like two successive no.1 hit single discs; an LP and EP (the first ever to crash the Top Ten) both selling way past the 100,000 mark; and a new single out today, She Loves You, which will be in the top three by next week as the advance orders for it already total 235,000.
They've every right to be big-heads. But off-stage, they are quiet, almost reserved, gently-spoken, expertly-mannered - and good fun.
Lead guitar is George Harrison, 20; Ringo Starr, the oldest as 23, is the drummer; the others are the singers and songwriters Paul McCartney, 21, and John Lennon, 22.
They write the main songs and the two hits by Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas; and now more songs for their other partners in the success, Tommy Quickly, The Fourmost, etc.
When do they get time to write?
"Oh anytime," murmurs a pensive Paul. "In the train, dressing room, in bed, in our sleep," adds John.
How about the fans? "We love them all,"smiles Ringo. "They made us."
And their screams? "Sam thing," grins George. "Wed start worrying if they stopped."
Also in town this week is Beatle no.5 - their ex-Etonian manager Brian Epstein, suave as their suits.
Tony Crawley, Bournemouth Times, 23 August 1963

:: This, and all the local press reviews of The Beatles' shows in Bournemouth can be read in Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth, available for order at www.beatlesandbournemouth.com.