An exhibit of early photographs of The Beatles

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All you need is film
An exhibit of early photographs of The Beatles recalls the halcyon days -- including their first visit to Miami Beach
BY HOWARD COHEN
hcohen@herald.com

That Beatles song had it all wrong. The Beatles are back in the S.O.B.E.

The U.S.S.R? Surely they were jesting.

The Beatles! Backstage and Behind the Scenes, a new CBS Photo Archive traveling exhibition, featuring 71 mostly unseen images of the Fab Four as they introduced Beatlemania to our shores, made its United States debut at Ocean Drive's Miami Beach Art Deco Welcome Center on Saturday for a four-month stay.

Coming on the heels of Paul McCartney's well-received two-night concert stop at Sunrise's National Car Rental Center and several reported McCartney sightings in South Florida of late, the exhibit benefits from perfect timing.

Inclement, working class Liverpool, the birthplace of The Beatles, would seem a bizarre sister city to sunny Miami Beach. But The Beatles and Miami Beach go together better than Ob-La-Di and Ob-La-Da.

Miami Beach, after all, was a stop on the group's first U.S. tour in February 1964. Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr rehearsed at the Deauville Hotel on Collins Avenue and 62nd Street (it's now the Radisson-Deauville) for their second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

By this time, The Beatles had transcended their star status in England's Liverpool to become international stars on the world stage. The spirited single I Want to Hold Your Hand was the No. 1 song in the country. In two months, on April 4, 1964, the Liverpool lads would hold down the first five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 -- from Can't Buy Me Love to Please Please Me -- a feat never matched.

Among the many shots, the new exhibit captures this first brush with phenomenal fame using CBS archival photos of the lads swimming in the ocean behind the Deauville and drawing amused stares from a fascinated public.

''The Beatles were as shocked at the reaction as most people were to their popularity in the U.S.,'' says John Filo, director of CBS Photography. ``In the photos, they are some young guys having fun with their lives and enjoying it, and that comes across.

``They look cute in those terry cloth matching tops and dark swim trunks. There's a lot of character to the stuff. It's nice to see that kind of access [to fans at the time]. We don't see that anymore with stars anywhere. It's all such a private thing now to get behind the scenes.''

INNOCENT TIME

It was a different world in 1964, of course. Somehow more innocent.

Yes, the Vietnam War was in its early stages and President Kennedy had just been assassinated. The Bay of Pigs fiasco was a recent bad memory. But Beatlemania, a throwback to Elvis Presley in the '50s and Frank Sinatra in the '40s, felt giddier. It was even more momentous a pop culture artifact.

''It's so universal -- it's something that is not offensive to anybody,'' suggests South Florida Beatles expert Joe Johnson, host of the nationally syndicated Beatle Brunch (airing at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays on WMXJ-FM 102.7). ``Some say rap is offensive. Some say rock is offensive. But with The Beatles there are no explicit lyrics. There's nothing offensive.''

The Beatles exhibit, then, is one of the most family-oriented event happening on South Beach this Memorial Day weekend.

''One of the things [appealing] about the exhibit is that you can bring your kids and your kids can bring their kids. It's something every generation can relate to,'' Johnson says. ``Paul had said that their ultimate message was about love. It's so universal.''

Perhaps this is one reason The Beatles endure 32 years after their bitter split, almost 22 years after Lennon's assassination in New York and less than a year after the world lost Harrison to cancer. Miami Beach caught The Beatles at their sweetest, a couple years before drugs and maturation led to internal power struggles and, consequently, their richest recorded works from 1965's Rubber Soul to 1969's Abbey Road.

The 1966 decision to swear off touring altogether further distanced The Beatles from the lovable moptop images pictured in scene after scene in this exhibit.

Images include: The Beatles, in their second live television performance, on a Sullivan show also featuring actress Mitzi Gaynor, raconteur Myron Cohen and, who can forget, the unicyclists; McCartney mugging for the cameras in Miami during their Sullivan appearance; McCartney and Starr gleefully swapping instruments during rehearsals at the Deauville.

''The significance of the exhibit in Miami Beach is obvious,'' says Johnson. ``They played at the Deauville and they liked it so much they stayed an extra week and went boating and skiing. They took in the sights and flavor of Miami Beach, met with the kids at the University of Miami, and in subsequent interviews they said they would like to live in Miami Beach. When McCartney was here in 1990 at Joe Robbie Stadium [now Pro Player] he said it was so magical.''

Adds Filo, ``Miami Beach had a cachet then. [Jackie] Gleason moving to Miami Beach [helped] make it a hot spot. There was a lot of entertainment down that way -- especially at the hotels such as the Fontainebleau. And with the demise of Cuba [as a tourist destination], Miami picked up some of that entertainment.''

(ПРОДОЛЖЕНИЕ СТАТЬИ)
MCCARTNEY'S EXHIBIT

Curiously, on the day the Miami Beach Beatles exhibit opened, the visual artistry of McCartney went on display at a new show at Liverpool's Walker Gallery, which is hosting the United Kingdom's first comprehensive exhibition of Macca's artwork. The exhibit includes more than 70 paintings, alongside wood sculpture and photo pieces created by McCartney. The first image at the U.K. gallery greeting visitors is titled Big Heart 1999, one of the few pictures on exhibition that McCartney has painted since meeting his fiancée Heather Mills.

''Liverpool has always been in the heart of McCartney,'' said the Walker Gallery's communications manager Jo Cooper in a release.

McCartney hasn't forgotten our island across the Atlantic either.

According to local gossips, McCartney and Mills dined at Miami Beach's The Forge the night before his Sunrise concerts. But the Beatle wanted something he couldn't find on the menu -- spinach soufflé -- and got it. When he found out a couple dining across the room were from Liverpool he gave them a shout-out across the room in Liverpudlian dialect. The woman wept.

That kind of adulation is in direct contrast to the faces of the CBS press corps charged with following this unusual-looking bunch around America in 1964. Some of the photos on exhibit in Miami Beach capture the skeptical look on the faces of the reporters who considered The Beatles a passing fad.

''The members of the press all look like our dads wearing Beatles wigs,'' says a chuckling Filo. 'There's a goofiness going along with it, not quite believing it, but [the mind-set was] `They are hot -- gotta cover it.' ''

Most chillingly, we get a glimpse of The Beatles entertaining the scribes and photographers at a press conference held at New York's Central Park during the band's first U.S. visit. Sixteen years later, mere steps away across the street at the Dakota, Lennon would meet his end on a chilly December night in 1980 at the hands of a deranged fan.

FINDING PHOTOS

Mounting The Beatles! Backstage and Behind the Scenes was akin to a hard day's night. Time ravaged these photos. No one thought they would be worth anything when they were taken for use as publicity stills or newspaper reports. Stuffed into filing cabinets that have long since grown moldy and dusty (''fumes came out when we opened some of these cabinets,'' says Filo), the photos needed considerable restoration at a cost pushing $150 per photo.

''These things have been bouncing around warehouses for a number of years,'' Filo says. ``My predecessors were ordered to destroy them, but they found places to hide them. We had up to 1,400 boxes and were able to go through that last year and start cataloging a lot of this stuff. We found those [Beatles] images, and what's amazing to me is that a lot of the images have never been seen before.''

With today's advancements in digital restoration technology and storage, ''should a hurricane wipe out that show, we have the [photos] on three CDs and could have the show printed and back up within 48 hours,'' Filo says.

That's good news for Johnson, who has seen some of the photos and who plans to attend the exhibit.

'It's funny to see [The Beatles] sitting on those lounge chairs with long pants. Their manager Brian Epstein had told them, `No sunburns!' They had a charm and a character. Our parents might have been irate at first, but now . . . it's pretty interesting. Even though [The Beatles] might have been doing their own things, it was still pretty calm compared to what is going on today.''

Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC/Didn't get to bed last night/On the way the paper bag was on my knee/Man I had a dreadful flight/I'm back in the U.S.S.R./You don't know how lucky you are, boy/Back in the U.S.S.R.

Nah, we love you, Beatles. But you were wrong there.




IF YOU GO

The Beatles! Backstage and Behind the Scenes runs through Sept. 2 at the Miami Beach Art Deco Welcome Center, 1001 Ocean Dr., Miami Beach. The exhibition is open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Admission is $10, children 6 and younger are free. Call 1-866-278-4685 or e-mail BeatlesTickets@aol.com