Here is something very special indeed. This is a portrait of Prudence Bury at age seventeen, while she attended the Royal School of Ballet. It was taken by Antony Armstrong-Jones, before he married Princess Margaret and was named the 1st Earl of Snowdon. Lord Snowdon is known for many things, among them his numerous portraits of Lady Diana, Princess of Wales.
Do I have anything good to say about the late Allen Klein? No, I don’t. He was an opportunistic, dishonest, unscrupulous scumbag. Eric Idle and John Belushi were dead-on with their Ron Decline parody in “The Rutles”. Hey look, there’s Al Franken, the new senator from Minnesota, with his old comedy partner Tom Davis.
The first LP I ever bought with my own money was “Let It Be” the day it was released, and I immediately noticed that Apple Records had become “an abkco managed company”. Even as a kid of fourteen I was suspicious of what that meant.
In this picture the second scan is from an 80’s British LP copy of “Let It Be”, and you’ll notice that the name Harold Seider is missing. Seider was Klein’s attorney, and later he was John Lennon’s lawyer.
Since “Let It Be” I have tried to avoid Allen B. Klein Company products, with the only exceptions being on vinyl. As a consequence, my Rolling Stones collection is minimal. One of the exceptions is the Stones outtakes LP, “Metamorphosis”. I bought it for a couple of bucks in college as a cut-out, only a year after its release in 1975.
“Metamorphosis” has a some tracks worth noting, including the Dylan-influenced “Memo From Turner” and a good alternate version of “Out Of Time”. The best song, I think, is “Each and Every Day of the Year”. Unfortunately, it’s in fake stereo that includes phase shifting as well as frequency separation, so it sounds lousy if forced into mono.
For its American release, the 1965 Dave Clark Five movie “Catch Us If You Can” was given the title “Having a Wild Weekend.” If you look quickly, you can catch a couple glimpses of Prue Bury, where she’s made up to look almost like the original Goth girl!
Prue even dances with… the Wolfman?? There’s a costume party later in the movie with a man dressed as Frankenstein.
The gent with the hat is Clive Swift, best known as Richard Bucket, the long-suffering husband in the English TV series “Keeping Up Appearances.” Here’s one last quick shot of Prue that I found.
One of the best of the many memorable vignettes in “A Hard Day’s Night” is the exchange between John and “Millie,” played by the wonderful character actress Anna Quayle. In this video is the full scene, followed by Quayle a few years later in an episode of “The Avengers”, and then in a brief role from the 1981 production of “Brideshead Revisited.” Nickolas Grace is the outrageous Anthony Blanche, with a performance that’s over-the-top, yet more reserved than Tim Curry probably would have done it. I end the clip with Anna Quayle talking about her part in AHDN.
Along with Prudence Bury, another appearance in “A Hard Day’s Night” that isn’t credited in the film is Margaret Nolan, who was with Paul’s grandfather at the Baccarat table. The scene is an obvious parody of Sean Connery’s introduction in “Dr. No.” I see the James Bond movies as having been the first wave of the British Invasion, helping pave the way for the Beatles. I’ve put together a video with Margaret Nolan in AHDN, followed by a clip from another famous 1964 movie she was in, that I’m sure you know well.
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In 1965, Margaret Nolan was in the Gerry and the Pacemakers movie, “Ferry Cross the Mercy.” Never released on video, it was produced by Beatles manager Brian Epstein, with music by George Martin and cinematography by Gilbert Taylor, who also shot “A Hard Day’s Night.” Do you recognize somebody else in this clip who was in AHDN?
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