Category: Beatles

Pattie Boyd, Isla Blair and, from the Royal School of Ballet, Prue Bury

My idea for a Beatles book that doesn’t exist is, “The Complete Hard Day’s Night Photo Collection.” It would be an expensive, large-format hardcover edition, in a slipcase, along the lines of what Genesis Publications puts out. Many photos from various sources would have to be pulled together, including a large collection that Miramax Films made available in thumbnail-size when playing its DVD release of the movie on a computer.

Genesis has a book by Astrid Kirschherr and Max Scheler, called Golden Dreams, with photos taken during the filming of A Hard Day’s Night, but my dream volume would contain every available still photo that was snapped on the set and behind the scenes of the movie, from the original negatives. The best shots would be full-page, and printed landscape or portrait as required, so you’d have to turn the book around for some of them. For practicality, the second half of the book would have smaller images.

Of particular interest for me are the photos with Prudence Bury-Fuchs, who I am proud and flattered to call my friend. Recently, I was very pleased when a girlfriend of Prue’s from the Royal School of Ballet found Prue through my site. This bit of happiness is the sort of thing that makes me want to keep the web log going. Prue says Ringo took quite a few pictures himself during filming on the train, and as far as I know they have never been published.

With that bit of background out of the way, let’s look at some pictures. These can all be clicked to see larger versions.

There are many different takes from this famous photo session at Twickenham Film Studio with (l-r) Pattie Boyd, Tina Williams, Prue Bury, and Sue Whitman. Here are some I haven’t featured before now.

Prue is so poised and expressive in her photos. She’s always doing something interesting, and that’s still true today.

A pose taken from the left…

… and a different angle of the same pose.

Oops! This one should have also been taken from the other side.

Be sure to click on this next one. It’s an image that I posted some time ago, that has since appeared all over the Net, except you’ll see it’s higher-resolution here, and it isn’t cropped. I’m sure this one will likewise soon appear elsewhere, which is great — the more people seeing Prue, the better! Shortly before the filming of A Hard Day’s Night began, John Lennon had started wearing contact lenses, and I wonder if they accounted for the peculiar expression he has here.

As you can see from this proof copy, the print I have crops the sides of the original negative.

And here is another shot from the same sitting. Notice how Pattie appears identical to other photo, but Prue is doing something completely different? I’m hoping to soon have a high-quality copy of this picture…

…but for now this is all I have that isn’t obscured. I love the hair clips!

Finally, another photo I scanned that has also shown up in lots of other places, but this one isn’t cropped. It’s a fascinating character study, because while Pattie looks like Pattie, Ringo’s expression is very atypical for him, and Prue is contemplative, almost pensive.