The Beatles and Marlene Dietrich Had an Embarrassing First Meeting

The Beatles and Marlene Dietrich had an awkward first meeting while performing at the Royal Variety Performance, the U.K.’s most prestigious charity event, in 1963. The group and singer performed for Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret, alongside some of the best acts of the time.

George Harrison didn’t understand why The Beatles performed alongside world-renowned artists like Marlene Dietrich

Performing at the Royal Variety Performance was an honor for The Beatles but also a bit of a hindrance. George Harrison told the press that he struggled to understand why The Beatles performed alongside world-renowned artists like Dietrich. He also wondered if their performance was fair for fans who couldn’t afford tickets.

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but why are the Beatles on the same stage as a mass of show business greats? . . . We’re just four normal folk who have had a couple of hit records,” George said (per Joshua M. Greene’s Here Comes The Sun: The Spiritual And Musical Journey Of George Harrison).

“On an occasion like this, we would have liked some of our fans in the audience, to make us feel more at home. After all, it was those people who made it possible for us in the first place.”

George may have been on to something. The Beatles were still fairly new when they performed at the Royal Variety Performance. Although they’d done a residency in Hamburg, Germany, and one at The Cavern Club in Liverpool, they were still babies in the show business world. They had a lot to learn. So, as amateurs, they were very nervous, on and off the stage.

Paul McCartney said The Beatles and Dietrich had an embarrassing first meeting

There was a lot of nervous energy during The Beatles’ time performing at the Royal Variety Performance. First, Paul McCartney made a nervous joke to their audience. Then, John Lennon introduced “Twist And Shout” with another. He said, “For our last number I’d like to ask your help. The people in the cheaper seats clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewelry. We’d like to sing a song called ‘Twist And Shout.'”

There was nervous energy backstage too. In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul McCartney wrote that The Beatles and Dietrich had an embarrassing first meeting. He wrote that he and the group were “a little weird” about meeting famous people.

Someone had asked The Beatles if they wanted to meet the “colossal star.” The Beatles agreed. “They said she was very proud of her legs,” Paul wrote. “Now, by this time she was getting old, maybe in her sixties, and we were all in our early twenties, so it would be like looking at your auntie’s legs or your grandma’s legs.

“I wasn’t sure we wanted to do that. But as soon as we got there, one of us said, ‘Oh bloody hell, what great legs you’ve got!’ Somebody had to say it, I suppose, but it was all a bit embarrassing.”

Later, John said (per Beatles Bible), “That show’s a bad gig, anyway. Everybody’s very nervous and uptight and nobody performs well.”

The singer called the Fab Four ‘sexy’

After the show, Dietrich told The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, “They are so sexy. They have the girls so frantic for them, they must have quite a time.” Epstein kept silent, but according to Greene, his assistant Alistair Taylor later said she wasn’t wrong.

Taylor said, “After every concert, the best-looking female fans would be given instructions as to how to get back to the hotel. It was one of the perks of the job, and the boys liked their perks. . . . They had this amazing power to point and say, ‘You, you, you, and you,’ and lovely young women would arrive at the hotel simply begging for sex.”

So, The Beatles’ leg comment didn’t turn Dietrich off. Their time at the Royal Variety Performance wasn’t a complete failure as they thought.