Tag: Prue Bury

Pretty ballerina

This Easter Sunday is Prue Bury’s birthday, and for it I’ll be posting a very special photograph of her, taken by a Beatle on the set of A Hard Day’s Night. Prue’s on the right in this photo, age 17, at the Royal School of Ballet in London.

In 1958, Antony Armstrong-Jones, later titled the First Earl of Snowdon, was appointed the court photographer for the Royal Family. That same eventful year, Armstrong-Jones took this portrait of Prue.

Prudence Bury, age 17

Soon afterwards, Prue would meet Mary Quant and Vidal Sassoon, and be a witness to, and a part of, the start of what later came to be known as Swinging London.

http://youtu.be/uyIZtrvzGEM

Prue in the tub with a hat

“Prue, in the tub, with a hat” sounds like a solution to the board game ‘Clue’, but I couldn’t think of what else to call this post other than what it is — a picture of Prue Bury (when she was Prue Hooper) wearing a Halston straw Derby hat, while sitting in a bathtub full of water!

Prue says of this unusual pose,

I have the photo in my scrap book. That was an uncomfortable shoot. A bath full of water and a suit which grew to be very heavy and cold! The hat looked great!

Thanks go to Martha B. at Nibs for having this scan from a 1968 issue of Look magazine.

She’s a Prunette


George Harrison, Pattie Boyd, Prue Bury, Wilfrid Brambell, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney

Prue Bury was joking this week about something that I’ll be featuring later, and she said, “Spike Milligan had “I told them I was ill” put on his tombstone. Mine will be “I told them I was not a blond!” (Prue has kept her hair lightened for some years now.) Spike Milligan, along with Peter Sellers, was one of the Goon Show goons, a BBC radio program that was a favorite of the Beatles, and was one of the inspirations for the Monty Python troupe.

[audio:http://www.thegoonshow.net/downloads/mp3/54-09-28~s05e01~the_whistling_spy_enigma.mp3|titles=The Goon Show: The Whistling Spy]

As someone else on the Net says, commenting on Prue, “Real class tells. And this brunette is REAL class.” Indeed she is.


Prue Bury, George Harrison, Pattie Boyd

The pictures are courtesy of Lynn at Pattie Boyd’s Sixties Style on Yahoo!

The true Prue revealed

A few days ago, I said of Prue Bury in a particular photo, “Prue is contemplative, almost pensive.” I’ve long wondered about her expression in this snapshot, but now I know it was a put-on, and she was only pretending to be serious. Place your mouse pointer over the image to see for yourself.

“Between scenes we relaxed but didn’t stop laughing. Ringo pretended he didn’t think Prue was being very funny!” said Pattie. From the UK magazine, Woman’s Own, May 30, 1964.

My thanks go to Lynn, who runs the Yahoo! Group Pattie Boyd’s Sixties Style.

Prue-viewing prints


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.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PRUE BURY!

Happy birthday to Prudence Bury, my all-time favorite Beatles girl. After many years of curiosity and sporatic searching, I got serious about using the Internet to find Prue, and with the help of Lia Pamina I finally did. Prue and I began corresponding last year, and an in-person introduction is tentatively scheduled for this coming September.

Having wondered about Prue since seeing a 10th anniversary screening of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, I had built up a rather idealized image of her in my mind. I wasn’t prepared for how easily she breezed past that ideal, totally knocking me out with her charm, humor, warmth, and sincerity.

Independent of her Beatles connection, Prue Bury is impressive and accomplished, and she is the very definition of a true Class Act. It is my great privilege to know her in a small way.