George Harrison Didn’t Invent the Word ‘Grotty’ and Didn’t Want to Say It in The Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
Contrary to popular belief, George Harrison didn’t invent the word “grotty,” and he hated saying it in The Beatles‘ A Hard Day’s Night. If George could’ve, he would’ve deleted the scene that saw him mouth the slang term.
George Harrison unintentionally coined ‘grotty’ in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
There’s a lot of randomness in The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night. That’s just how most of the band’s films went. It was all very witty, artistic, and trend-setting. However, no one could’ve predicted that a particular word would catch on.
One of the strangest scenes in the 1964 film comes when George stumbles into the office of an advertising agent, Simon Marshall.
Marshall’s assistant, Jenny, greets George as if they’ve been waiting for him, but George doesn’t understand. She answers a phone call and says, “I’ve got one… Oh, I think so. Yes, he can talk. No, I think you ought to see him.”
Simon approves of Jenny’s choice. “Oh yes, he’s a definite pass,” Simon says. “He’ll look good alongside Susan.” George says there must be some misunderstanding. Simon thinks George is playing games and says George is a natural.
Simon asks George to give his opinion on some new clothes for teenagers. “Well, not your real opinion, naturally. It’ll be written out, and you’ll learn it,” Simon says.
“Now, you’ll like these. You’ll really ‘dig’ them. They’re ‘fab,’ and all the other pimply hyperboles,” Simon continues. “I wouldn’t be seen dead in them,” George says. “They’re dead grotty.” Simon asks, “Grotty?” George explains, “Yeah, grotesque.”
“Make a note of that word and give it to Susan,” Simon says to Jenny. “It’s rather touching, really. Here’s this kid, giving me his utterly valueless opinion when I know for a fact that within a month, he’ll be suffering from a violent inferiority complex and loss of status because he isn’t wearing one of these nasty things! Of course they’re grotty, you wretched nit! That’s why they were designed! But that’s what you’ll want,” Simon says.
George denies he will. Simon threatens to replace him, but George doesn’t care. The Beatle then insults Simon’s other “trend-setter,” Susan, and the adman throws George out of the office.
It’s a bizarre scene, but fans latched on to “grotty,” thinking it was actually in George’s vocabulary.
George didn’t invent ‘grotty’ for ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
In The Beatles’ Anthology (per Beatles Bible), George explained that he didn’t create “grotty;” the scriptwriter for A Hard Day’s Night did.
He said, “There was one piece of dialogue where I say, ‘Oh, I’m not wearing that – that’s grotty!’ [Scriptwriter] Alun Owen made that up; I didn’t. People have used that word for years now. It was a new expression: grotty – grotesque. I suppose he thought that being from Liverpool, he knew our kind of humour.”
The Beatle didn’t want to say the slang term
George didn’t invent “grotty,” and he certainly didn’t want to say it in A Hard Day’s Night. During a 1989 interview with Mark Rowland (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), George said he hated saying the word in the film.
He said, “They just got this writer who was from the same place or same area as we were from, a playwright, and he just sort of hung out with us for two days and then went off and wrote it. And then when we came to shoot it, we said, ‘I’m not saying that. I wouldn’t say that.’
“And we just changed it into what we would say. Not in every instance—because I said a word which became like a … you know, people still use it to this day, and it was the dumbest word: ‘grotty.’ But that was the scriptwriter wrote that. [Pretending to sulk.] I didn’t want to say it, but I said it anyway.”
In Anthology, George explained, “If there was something we really didn’t like, I don’t suppose we would have done it – though by the time we got to ‘Help!‘ we were cocky enough to change the dialogue as we liked.”
Whether George liked using the word “grotty” or not, it became part of the generation’s vernacular.
