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 to the USA

If anyone had been in any doubt after their summer season at the Gaumont in August, The Beatles' shows at the Winter Gardens in Bournemouth on 16 November 1963 at the height of what the Daily Mirror had dubbed Beatlemania just a fortnight before, confirmed their popularity as a cultural phenomenon the like of which Britain had never seen before.

Shortly before the autumn tour Brian Epstein had flown to the United States and secured a deal that would see The Beatles appear on the Ed Sullivan Show the following February. When the US news networks CBS, ABC and NBC got wind of it they dispatched reporters to find out what all the fuss was about - after all, The Beatles hadn't had even a hint of a hit Stateside at this point.

With the presence of camera crews from all three networks whose footage would introduce them to America, it was a high-pressure date for The Beatles who were further prevented from getting to the sanctuary of their dressing room ahead of the first show by five stowaway fans who had to be removed.

The actual concerts were standard Beatles’ shows of the era. The 13th date of their autumn tour of Britain and Ireland, they played the same ten-song set throughout. 

Opening with I Saw Her Standing There, the first track on their debut album; they followed with hit single From Me To You; All My Loving; versions of The Miracles’ You Really Got A Hold On Me and Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven, which were all to appear on With The Beatles, their second album which came out on 22 November. 

Two more covers – The Shirelles’ Boys with Ringo on lead vocals; and Meredith Wilson’s Til There Was You from the musical The Music Man – followed, before they played their smash hit She Loves You and ended with two classic R&B belters, Barrett Strong’s Money (That’s What I Want) and, of course, the Isley Brothers’ Twist and Shout.

Here's NBC host Jack Paar talking about The Beatles coverage he broadcast on 3 January 1964.

:: You can see the CBS morning show story broadcast on 7 December 1963 - the first time US television audiences ever saw The Beatles - at this earlier blog post. 

:: The full story of The Beatles' first appearance on American television can be read in Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth, available to order at a special price here.

Beatles' meal deal

The Beatles on stage at the Winter Gardens, Bournemouth

The Beatles’ date at the Winter Gardens, Bournemouth on 16 November 1963 was a pivotal moment in their conquest of America with film crews from the three major US TV networks on hand to film them. Broadcast on 22 November, CBS footage from the Winter Gardens introduced The Beatles to American television and set in motion a chain of events that ensured I Want To Hold Your Hand was top of the USA charts when they landed in New York on 7 February 1964 ahead of their landmark appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Barely a fortnight before the Winter Gardens shows the Daily Mirror had coined the term Beatlemania to describe the fevered reception The Beatles enjoyed wherever they went. They were the biggest band in the land and the Bournemouth audience was just as wild as any they encountered at that time. For their own safety they were delivered to the venue in a police van, which also took them away at the end of the night.

It had previously been thought they returned immediately to the Branksome Towers Hotel overlooking Branksome Chine where they stayed the night, but freelance journalist Roger Guttridge recently uncovered a fascinating footnote to the Winter Gardens episode. Writing in the Blackmore Vale Magazine, he reports The Beatles went in search of a late-night meal after leaving the Winter Gardens and found themselves at a restaurant in Exeter Road, Bournemouth where they had eaten the previous August during their week-long residency across town at the Gaumont.

But the doorman initially turned them away as the restaurant was closed for a private party hosted by Javier Revuelta Pineiro and his new wife Joan who were celebrating with friends and family who had been unable to attend their wedding on 26 October.

The host, known to his friends as Rev, recalls: “Ringo came over and said, ‘We’ve eaten here before after the show. Can we join the party?’”

Rev offered to cook for them himself and asked what they would like.

“Ringo said they’d like eggs, bacon, sausage and chips and I cooked them their meal. They were smashing lads and one of them asked how they could repay us. I said I didn’t want anything so they offered to go out and get their stuff and play for my guests.

“They played and mucked about for an hour. Twenty or 30 girls also turned up and the party went on till 2 o’clock in the morning. John Lennon gave me his personal number and the Cavern Club number and said they would repay me.”

: Photos of The Beatles at the Branksome Towers Hotel and from the Winter Gardens shows on 16 November 1963 can be seen at the Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth exhibition at Lighthouse, Poole until 10 March.

The book, Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth is available now at www.beatlesandbournemouth.com

Cracking the Colonies

NBC footage of The Beatles at the Winter Gardens broadcast on 3 January 1964

Many people believe Ed Sullivan introduced The Beatles to America, but their first television appearances used the footage shot in Bournemouth – initially on CBS and then on NBC’s Jack Paar Show, a month before the Ed Sullivan Show.

Until the Winter Gardens footage was shown though, the group’s track record in America was virtually non-existent.

At first, Capitol turned down the group and their debut single, Love Me Do, was not even released. The follow-ups, Please Please Me and From Me To You, both flopped on the Veejay imprint, before EMI struck a deal with the Swan label to release She Loves You on 16 September 1963. It bombed.

But with coast-to-coast airplay, I Want To Hold Your Hand topped the US Billboard charts on 1 February 1964. A week later The Beatles landed in New York – at the newly renamed John F Kennedy Airport – and on 9 February made their debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. The show was watched by 73 million people; 40% of the entire population.

Beatlemania was in its pomp and after seven weeks at number one I Want To Hold Your Hand was replaced by, of course, the re-released She Loves You.

This extract is taken from Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth which is available to order from www.beatlesandbournemouth.com.

The Beatles, Winter Gardens, Bournemouth

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Film crews from all three American television networks were in Bournemouth to cover The Beatles' show at the Winter Gardens on 16 November 1963. The term 'Beatlemania' had only been coined a fortnight before and Britain was readily surrendering to the boys' undoubted charm.

Footage from the Winter Gardens show was broadcast on CBS Morning News on 22 November - the first time The Beatles had been seen on US television. But America would have to wait to fully embrace The Beatles. Later that day, President John F Kennedy was assassinated and the country mourned its lost leader.

No less a luminary than Walter Cronkite revived The Beatles footage on 10 December and the die was cast – Beatlemania was to sweep the USA the following year.

Read the full story of what happened that night at the Winter Gardens in Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth, published on 22 September 2011.