How The Beatles’ London looks today: 60 years of A Hard Day’s Night
We went in search of the swinging London locations featured in The Beatles’ pop movie milestone A Hard Day’s Night.
It’s impossible to underestimate the influence of Richard Lester’s Beatles collaboration A Hard Day’s Night, released 60 years ago on 6 July 1964. Its imagery of the Fab Four rapidly entered the lexicon of popular culture, its antic approach to pop music on screen going on to influence everything from fashion, attitudes and culture to music videos and MTV. With an initial background in advertising, Lester’s third feature proved he was an astute and vibrant filmmaker, all but defining the fun, energetic surrealism of 1960s British culture in one fell swoop.
Scripted by Alun Owen, A Hard Day’s Night follows a day in the life of the lads at the height of Beatlemania. John, Paul, George and Ringo, playing themselves, are joined by Paul’s conniving but very clean grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell) as they make their way to a live television concert in London. Unable to be restrained from misadventures by their manager Norm (Norman Rossington) and their roadie Shake (John Junkin), the Fab Four find themselves in the upper echelons of the capital: a world filled with ad agencies, high-end casinos and wine soirées with the music press. With Ringo going AWOL only hours before the show, however, will the group reunite in time for their live broadcast concert?
As the film was intended as promotional material for its music as much as a feature (one which United Artists funded so they could exploit the loophole of being able to distribute the soundtrack), Lester approached the project with his creative verve firing on all cylinders. Rather than simply being a string of music videos, A Hard Day’s Night is a beautiful and atmospheric portrait of London just as it started to swing. From lavish venues to industrial landscapes, all filmed on location, Lester’s film is one of the great London portraits of the decade.
Let’s go parading before it’s too late… Here are five locations from A Hard Day’s Night as they stand today.
Marylebone
In one of British cinema’s most celebrated openings, Lester films the lads being chased around a station as they try and catch a train to their next concert. As the titles unfold, we see John, George and Ringo being chased in a neighbouring road. The road is Boston Place, though its length is hidden by the depth of field of cinematographer Gilbert Taylor’s lens.
The three Beatles are then chased into Marylebone Station using the old entrance under the beautiful ironwork designed by Henry William Braddock. Today, the entrances aren’t in use except to get to the shops that now inhabit the old entrance halls.
John, George and Ringo hide from the mob of fans in a set of telephone booths. Today, the space is occupied by a small supermarket, and the spot where the booths were is now where people buy their wine.
Escaping from the booths, the lads run on to the main concourse of the station, which is strangely barred by a makeshift wall. The concourse has been completely opened out today.
As the lads run past, we see Paul incognito sitting with his grandfather. These chairs were in the middle of the main concourse but have since been removed, with chairs now situated where the barrier seen in the previous shot was.
Making their final bid for escape, we see the lads running to meet Paul on one of the platforms. The platform is just as busy today and is generally closer to how it was in the film than the other parts of the station – although you can no longer drive on and off the platforms by car.
Unusually, after the train journey, the Fab Four actually arrive back at Marylebone as well. They’re seen leaving the station in their car via the more recognisable entrance still in use today, albeit long since pedestrianised.
Scala Theatre
Lester’s film centres around a live broadcast concert at a theatre. The theatre was the Scala Theatre just behind Goodge Street tube station. We first see the theatre when the boys arrive in their car, driving along Scala Street.
Due to a fire in 1969, the theatre was demolished and, as shown in the photos, general office blocks have since been built on the site.
Due to the size of the theatre, it spanned several streets, including the street behind: Tottenham Street. Lester shoots the lads leaving the theatre from this entrance when they realise they’ve lost Ringo.
One of the few markers that this is the same location can also be seen on Tottenham Street. When arriving in the nick of time for their concert, the boys and Paul’s grandfather run through the still-standing entrance of Charlotte Mews.
They are greeted by a horde of fans on Tottenham Street, looking east towards Tottenham Court Road.
Playing fields
In one of the film’s most famous sequences, the boys muck about on a playing field to the tune of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’. In what feels like an early form of music video, the ordinary setting belies the wealth of strange and surreal imagery Lester captures. Since filming, the part of the field used, Thornbury playing fields in Isleworth, has been built on.
Even the high-rise block seen in the background of the original shots has been demolished, and where the lads dance about on a strange concrete square was roughly where the housing now sits on Stanborough Road.
Notting Hill
When Ringo decides to go parading before it’s too late, he finds himself first on the streets of Notting Hill. Armed with a camera, he takes to street photography, photographing some milk bottles on the gate post of a house on Lancaster Road.
His photography is interrupted further down the road, however, when he is spotted by some fans who chase him.
Finding a junk shop, he decides to disguise himself in some second-hand gear. The shop was at the other end of Lancaster Road and is now a luxury interiors shop.
Trying out his new disguise, he talks to a woman just outside the shop. This time, Lester shoots looking along All Saints Road.
Kew
Though Ringo’s wander around town takes him to many different locations, the most distinctive and beautifully filmed segment was shot around Kew. We first see Ringo on the foreshore just by Kew Bridge as he attempts and fails to take a selfie. Its rough location can be deduced by the position of Brentford Gasworks behind, along with Brentford Ait, the spit of land in the middle of the Thames.
Another shot shows Ringo walking towards Kew Bridge, with the low tide allowing him to walk on a thin sliver of land alongside the cobbles of the river wall.
Ringo then climbs up from the lower part of the river using an old chain. The location is marked by the still-standing Standpipe Tower seen in the background, now part of the London Museum of Water and Steam.
Ringo makes a young friend (David Janson) as they walk along the towpath. This shot looks west towards where the gasworks once stood. Today, the river is largely hidden behind foliage, and the industry that once defined the area has since vanished.
