George Harrison ‘Always Hated’ the Oscar-Winning Actor Who Blocked The Beatles’ Last No. 1 Single
In 1970, the final single The Beatles released before announcing their breakup failed to hit No. 1 because of an actor George Harrison disliked. Harrison was no fan of actor Lee Marvin or the film that won him an Oscar. It likely stung, then, when the song “Wanderin’ Star” blocked “Let It Be” from hitting No.1 in the U.K.
The Beatles’ George Harrison said he never liked this actor
While The Beatles were in California, Harrison and John Lennon tried to convince their bandmates to try LSD. While Paul McCartney refused, the others spent their day swimming in the pool and trying to avoid the attention of reporter Don Short. Later in the day, they viewed a screening of the film Cat Ballou.
“The movie was put on, and — of all things — it was a drive-in print of Cat Ballou,” Harrison said in The Beatles Anthology. “The drive-in print has the audience response already dubbed onto it, because you’re all sitting in your cars and don’t hear everybody laugh. Instead, they tell you when to laugh and when not to. It was bizarre, watching this on acid. I’ve always hated Lee Marvin, and listening on acid to that other little dwarf bloke with a bowler hat on, I thought it was the biggest load of baloney shite I’d ever seen in my life.”
Several years after this, Harrison had a new reason to dislike Marvin. “Let It Be” was The Beatles’ final single before they announced their breakup. It peaked at No. 2 in the United Kingdom. Marvin’s song “Wanderin’ Star” took the top spot instead of them.
George Harrison said he was disliked another person who was around when The Beatles took acid
While Harrison disliked Marvin, he outright resented the fact that Short was there. He felt Short brought bad vibes to the otherwise pleasant afternoon.
“I was swimming across the pool when I heard a noise (because [LSD] makes your senses so acute — you can almost see out of the back of your head),” he said. “I felt this bad vibe and I turned around and it was Don Short from the Daily Mirror. He’d been hounding us all through the tour, pretending in his phoney-baloney way to be friendly but, really, trying to nail us.”
Harrison said he was constantly aware of Short’s unwelcome presence.
“We were in one spot, John and me and Jim McGuinn, and Don Short was probably only about twenty yards away, talking. But it was as though we were looking through the wrong end of a telescope. He seemed to be in the very far distance, and we were saying, ‘Oh f***, there’s that guy over there.’”
John Lennon disliked a singer who blocked a different single from hitting No. 1
The Beatles dealt with a similar situation in 1967. They’d enjoyed a lengthy streak of No. 1 singles that came to an end when Englebert Humperdinck released the song “Release Me.” It beat both “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” for the top spot.
“That’s in the Guinness Book of World Records,” Humperdinck told the LA Times. “And for me to stop the Beatles from having their 12th number one was quite a coup.”
Lennon had long despised Humperdinck, so this likely came as a particularly stinging blow.
