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Hollywood screening of Beatles’ first American concert

Written by admin on January 13, 2011 – 10:48 pm -



On February 11, Hollywood’s Egyptian Theater will screen the complete American concert debut of The Beatles, with special guests The Beach Boys and Lesley Gore.

This is the first time the film has been seen in its entirety since the four nationwide closed-circuit screenings which took place over two weekends in March 1964.

The show features The Beatles’ show at the Washington Coliseum from February 11, 1964, as well as live sets from the Beach Boys and Lesley Gore, which were taped at the NBC Television Studios in Burbank, California.

The Beatles performed high energy versions of the following 12 songs at the Washington Coliseum:

  • “Roll Over Beethoven”
  • “From Me to You”
  • “I Saw Her Standing There”
  • “This Boy”
  • “All My Loving”
  • “I Wanna Be Your Man”
  • “Please Please Me”
  • “Till There Was You”
  • “She Loves You”
  • “I Want to Hold Your Hand”
  • “Twist and Shout”
  • “Long Tall Sally.”

Original poster for the closed-circuit broadcast
Beatles at the Washington Coliseum

This master video tape of the Washington show is a great improvement on the kinescope that has done the rounds over the years, both in terms of picture quality and completeness. The “Twist and Shout” encore and closing “Long Tall Sally” performance are now shown in full.

The Beatles First American Concert trailer


This is also the first time that the Beach Boys footage has been seen in full since the original screening. The DVD “The Beach Boys – The Lost Concert” was missing the song “Monster Mash.” The other songs performed were “Fun Fun Fun”, “Long Tall Texan”, “Little Deuce Coupe”, “Surfer Girl”, “Surfin’ USA”, “Shut Down”, “In My Room”, “Papa Oom-Mow-Mow” and “Hawaii”.

At the time of The Beatles’ Washington Coliseum show, Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” was at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 behind The Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” The Lesley Gore footage has not been seen in any form since the original closed-circuit screening in 1964.

The Egyptian Theater event has been put together by Ron Furmanek, who worked on the Beatles archive footage seen in “The Beatles Anthology.” Let’s hope that it won’t be long before the complete footage gets a DVD release.

The screening takes place at 7:30 pm, Friday, February 11th at the Egyptian Theater, 6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, California. Tickets can be ordered from the American Cinematheque box office at (323) 692-3431.



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Posted in 60s pop, The Beatles |



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