One of the first Mary Quant models, Prudence Bury was part of Swinging London at its beginning. Prue appeared with the Beatles in “A Hard Day’s Night” before Mary sent her to New York to introduce the miniskirt to America.
A very Happy Birthday for the wonderful Prudence Bury-Fuchs! This is a promotional photo with Prue and Terry, her first husband, after they were married and had moved to New York in 1965.
They were promoting the Youthquake fashion campaign, about which I’ll have more later.
There is a new Blu-ray release coming from Criterion of A Hard Day’s Night. I’m very pleased to see that Criterion includes Prue in the cast list.
In 1964, when modeling, Pattie and Prue spelled their names Patti and Pru. Here is Pattie talking about meeting George.
Pattie mentions the lunch she had with George. This is one of the photos taken at that lunch and, Prue, no more ciggies for you, dear!
Happy Birthday to Prue,
Happy Birthday to Prue,
Happy BIRTH-day, dear Prudence,
Happy Birthday to Prue!
The Sixties didn’t really kick into full swing until 1965. That was when the Beatles movie HELP! was released, the Beatles played Shea Stadium for the first time, and on September 1, 1965, British designer Mary Quant’s Youthquake fashion show introduced her miniskirts to America. One of the models on that trendsetting day was none other than Prue Bury, who is on the right in this newspaper photo. By Christmas, miniskirts and go-go boots were everywhere on American TV.
Prue married Terry, her first husband, in early 1965, then they moved to New York City. Before leaving England, Terry reprised his croupier role from A Hard Day’s Night in an episode of the TV series Danger Man, or Secret Agent as it’s called in the United States. Here are some clips that I spliced together.
[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/2013/04/DangerMan.flv 512 384]
I get a chuckle from seeing in the credits that, along with Terry’s name there is, of course, a Pratt.
Happy birthday, Prue!
Last summer, Prudence Bury-Fuchs got together with her old friends and classmates at the Royal Ballet School in London, for a reunion celebration she called “Now We Are 70!” Here’s a clipping from the school’s newsletter.
And now Prue is 70 plus a tiny bit more. Happy birthday, Prue!
Richard Lester, who directed the two truly great Beatle films, A Hard Day’s Night and HELP!, has received a Fellowship from the British Film Institute. With the recent death of Davy Jones, I’ve been hearing the old assertion that the Monkees TV show was based on AHDN, but I just don’t see it. HELP! was clearly the model for the series, with producers Raphelson and Schneider drawing inspiration from the fantasy of the boys living together in a quirky, colorful pad, full of groovy stuff.
I have high praise and thanks for author Ray Morton, and his book about the making of A Hard Day’s Night. Besides being a solid and thorough telling of the background and production of the movie, in A Hard Days Night: Music on Film Series, Morton did something no other writer on the subject has done — he gets the facts right about Prue Bury, and for that I am sincerely grateful. Ray Morton can be heard on Reject Radio talking about the movie and his book at this link. He comes in at 40:30 into the podcast.
Back in 2002, Rolling Stone had a piece about the Miramax DVD release of A Hard Day’s Night, and it has one of the classic promotional photos of the Beatles with (l-r) Pattie Boyd, Tina Williams, Prue Bury, and Sue Whitman.
By coincidence, and to my great amusement, that issue also had this item:
So the first time that Doug Pratt had a connection to Prue Bury, it was a different Doug Pratt!
It’s always a treat seeing pictures of Prue Bury for the first time. This one came from The Gilly on Tumblr. Prue was waiting for hairdresser Betty Glasow to take the pins out of her hair, and John pretended to cut it himself.
It’s interesting that John did that, in light of these comments by Prue:
John threw me by saying, “I hear you don’t like our singing!” Oops, what do I say to that? It is true that in one of the newspaper interviews I had said that I was impressed by their sharp repartee more than their singing! On reflection, a dumb thing to say. I plead nerves! Naturally I denied it and said the obvious, that one could never believe what one read in the press and wiggled out of it.
The boys were great fun on the train and kept Pattie and I laughing with their jokes. They were easy to get on with and natural in their behaviour, although John was the most reserved, and so when we were not shooting we sat and joked and smoked a lot… just cigarettes!! !! Ringo was mad about taking photos and snapped everything in sight, including me.
So even though John was the most reserved Beatle on that occasion, he was comfortable enough with Prue to play with her hair. But he didn’t get as silly as George did, wearing one of the hats the girls had — I assume it was Pattie’s. This picture is from the Yahoo group, Pattie Boyd’s Sixties Style.
All of these pictures were taken by Astrid Kirchherr, who signed this gallery print.
And here’s one of the snapshots that was taken by Ringo. I used it on Prue’s birthday last year. Lynn at Pattie Boyd’s Sixties Style did a great job of image editing to hide the page seam.
