Today in History: The Beatles Started Filming ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and George Harrison Met His Wife

On March 2, 1964, nearly 60 years ago today, The Beatles began filming A Hard Day’s Night. This was The Beatles’ first film, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. The band, having enjoyed success in the United Kingdom throughout 1963, were now international stars. On this day, George Harrison also met his future wife, Pattie Boyd.

‘A Hard Day’s Night’ was a way for The Beatles to capitalize on their success

When The Beatles traveled to America in early 1964, Beatlemania followed them across the Atlantic. They were at the height of their fame, and those around them decided to capitalize on that by putting the band in a movie. They wanted to do something different than typical music movies, too.

“We’d made it clear to Brian [Epstein] that we weren’t interested in being in one of those typical nobody-understands-our-music plots where the local dignitaries are trying to ban something as terrible as the Saturday night hop,” John Lennon said, per Pop Matters. “The kind of thing where we’d just pop up a couple of times between the action. Never mind all our pals, how could we face each other if we had allowed ourselves to be involved in that kind of movie?”

With the movie, director Richard Lester also wanted to portray shifting social norms in the United Kingdom. 

“The general aim of the film was to present what was apparently becoming a social phenomenon in this county,” he said. “Anarchy is too strong a word, but the quality of confidence that the boys exuded! Confidence that they could dress as they liked, speak as they liked, talk to the Queen as they liked, talk to the people on the train who ‘fought the war for them’ as they liked.”

The Beatles began filming ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ in 1964

Filming for A Hard Day’s Night began on March 2, 1964. The band arrived at Paddington Station at 8:30 a.m. to start the shoot. After filming in a crowd, they boarded a train, on which they continued to film throughout the week.

This day was also significant for Harrison, who met Boyd, his future wife. He asked her out on the first day, but she turned him down as she already had a boyfriend. When she returned to set a little over a week later, though, she had broken up with her boyfriend and accepted Harrison’s invitation. They got married in 1966 and divorced in 1977.

The film was a critical and commercial success

Of course, The Beatles’ fans went to see the film in droves. Film critics were surprised by how much they liked it, though.

“This is going to surprise you—it may knock you right out of your chair—but the new film with those incredible chaps, the Beatles, is a whale of a comedy,” critic Bosley Crowther wrote for The New York Times. “This first fiction film of the Beatles… has so much good humor going for it that it is awfully hard to resist.”

After the success of A Hard Day’s Night, the band released Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, and Yellow Submarine.