On April 28, 1975-a rain-in-the-forecast Monday-the movie ”Tommy” was unreeling (in ”Quintaphonic Sound”) at the State Lake theater, Marcel Marceau was miming it up at the Studebaker and hometown favorites Styx, riding the success of their Top 40 single ”Lady,” had just received a rousing welcome from the crowd at a weekend Auditorium show.
Over on the tube, former Beatle Ringo Starr and Lily Tomlin joined Tom and Dick on the Smothers Brothers` NBC show. And later in the evening, at midnight Central time, another former Beatle, John Lennon, dropped in on Tom Snyder`s ”Tomorrow” show.
According to the TV listings, Lennon would be talking about his fight against deportation, an ongoing court battle that began in 1972 and that Lennon ultimately would win in late 1975. The deportation struggle was indeed discussed, but, ”Tomorrow” being ”Tomorrow,” the conversation also caromed off topics of a lesser gravity. Lennon told Snyder that the Beatles had broken up out of boredom, said he thought the ”Tomorrow” set had gotten better and remarked that he, Lennon, looked funny in profile on the monitor (”You`re just not used to seeing yourself sideways”).
Lennon also told Snyder that he thought the reason many male musicians were onstage was to increase their chances for female companionship (or, to use his exact words, ”to get a little extra”)-recalling that he and the other young Beatles-to-be had witnessed girls screaming at Elvis Presley movies in Britain and had thought, ”That`s a good job.”
”You gotta be kidding me,” replied Snyder in his inimitable fashion.
”Is that one of the biggest reasons? The sexual aspects of singing? That`s the reason most of these great, dedicated artists are onstage? They don`t care about their music? They`re just up there for a little extra?”
”No, no,” replied Lennon. ”But that is a good incentive.”
That magic moment-and a whole lot more related to the Fab Four-will be on view once again Sunday during a free five-hour marathon showing of Beatles-related video by the Museum of Broadcast Communications in the Chicago Cultural Center Theatre.
The marathon will offer footage of the Beatles as a group and solo (with the emphasis in this show on solo material) and include appearances by the Liverpudlians on ”The Ed Sullivan Show,” ”Ready Steady Go,” ”The David Frost Show” and ”Shindig!” as well as excerpts from Beatle music videos and other projects.
”It`s pretty lighthearted,” says Bob Medich, Museum of Broadcast Communications archivist/producer who put together the marathon. ”It`s not meant to have any meaning. It`s just a collection of our favorite clips, an afternoon in the Cultural Center. Hopefully, people will come along and enjoy it.”
The five-hour marathon-which, Medich says, represents only ”a small percentage” of the museum`s Beatle video holdings-precedes by a week the 16th annual Beatlefest fan celebration, which will be held Aug. 22 and 23 at the Hyatt Regency O`Hare in Rosemont.
”It seemed that this would be a good time for us to showcase the Beatles stuff we have,” says Medich. ”The Beatles event the museum did in February of `89 (a multiple-day screening of moptop material) was a success, and we`ve gotten some new stuff since then.”
Among the video snippets on view Sunday will be some not-often-seen tape of John Lennon and Yoko Ono joining Mike Douglas on his talk show in February 1972. The pair co-hosted the show with Douglas for a week, helping pick guests and joining in festivities such as a macrobiotic cooking demonstration (along with a slightly bewildered-looking Chuck Berry, who happened to be on the show that day).
Footage from the Douglas show in Sunday`s marathon will include Berry and Lennon dueting on ”Johnny B. Goode,” backed by Elephant`s Memory, Yoko Ono and Lennon/Ono acquaintance (and onetime Yippie) Jerry Rubin on conga. Careful viewers, says Medich, will note that Ono`s microphone had been turned off after an earlier performance of ”Memphis” found her apparently startling Berry with some unscripted vocal gymnastics.
”Of all of our Beatle holdings, the thing I get the greatest thrill out of watching is the Mike Douglas stuff,” says Medich. ”Partly because I was instrumental in obtaining it, but also for the fact it`s so revealing. The presentation is relaxed in ways that MTV interviews and `Entertainment Tonight` interviews aren`t. The Douglas show was an hour and a half every day, and there are large portions where all they did was sit and talk, sort of off the top of their heads.”
Besides moments from the Snyder and Douglas shows, Sunday`s marathon will offer:
– An excerpt from Paul McCartney`s early-1970s ”James Paul McCartney”
special on ABC-TV in which McCartney sings ”Michelle” and other material against a backdrop of photo-studio light umbrellas-while wife Linda scoots around, just a tad intrusively, snapping photos.
– A bit of a Beatle promo video for ”Lady Madonna” (which has a ”Lady Madonna” soundtrack but shows the band in a studio actually singing ”Hey Bulldog”), plus promo videos for ”Paperback Writer,” ”Penny Lane,”
”Strawberry Fields Forever” and other songs.
– A segment of the ”Today” show that aired the morning after John Lennon was slain on Dec. 8, 1980. Among those interviewed was Beatle film director Richard Lester, who remarks that Lennon represented the idea that everything was possible.
– An excerpt from ”Aspel,” a British TV show hosted by Michael Aspel, on which George Harrison and Ringo Starr appeared together as guests in 1988- and on which a particularly animated Starr was asked if he liked nostalgia and replied: ”I love nostalgia. I think I was nostalgic at birth.”
Five attendees chosen by drawing at Sunday`s marathon will each receive a Beatle album-cover poster and a copy of MPI Home Video`s ”The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit”-the prizes to be awarded by WXRT disc jockey and Beatle buff Terri Hemmert and Beatlefest founder Mark Lapidos.
If you can`t make the Sunday marathon but would like to see the show, it will become a permanent part of the Museum of Broadcast Communications archives after Sunday and be available at the museum for viewing.
