In 1967, The Beatles released Magical Mystery Tour, a film vaguely planned out by Paul McCartney and John Lennon. It was not a hit with the public, and, according to McCartney, even the people on set didn’t like it. He shared why the more professional actors they hired grew increasingly irritated with the band throughout the shoot. In hindsight, he said, they probably had reason to be upset.
Paul McCartney said not everyone working on a Beatles film was happy to be there
When The Beatles released Magical Mystery Tour, they had already acted in two films together. This was different, though. They had no script for the project, just a vague idea of how it should go.
“There wasn’t a script for Magical Mystery Tour; you don’t need scripts for that kind of film. It was just a mad idea,” he said in The Beatles Anthology. “We said to everyone: ‘Be on the coach on Monday morning.’ I told them all, ‘We’re going to make it up as we go along, but don’t worry — it’ll be all right.’ I did have to keep chatting to people, because the security of a script is obviously very helpful. But we knew we weren’t doing a regular film — we were doing a crazy roly-poly Sixties film, with ‘l am the eggman’ and so on.”
While the band planned some elements of the film, they mostly added things as they went. McCartney admitted that this irritated some of the more seasoned actors on set.
“It did get a little hairy once or twice,” he said. “I felt a bit sorry for people like Nat Jackley, whom we’d admired. He was an old music-hall comedian who used to do eccentric dancing and funny walks. He was great at all of that, and John and I really loved him. John wanted to do a sequence with him, but he got a bit annoyed because there wasn’t enough script. Some of the older guys who were used to working with scripts — which, after all, is only sensible — were a little bit disappointed with the film.”
It isn’t surprising that some were frustrated with The Beatles’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ film
It’s hard to imagine a person not being a little frustrated with the filming of Magical Mystery Tour. It was so unplanned that it likely appeared directionless to anyone outside the Fab Four. They barely even worked with a director. According to Lennon, the band asked the camera people if they could direct. If they said yes, they’d hire them.
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The level of disorganization meant they frequently ran into problems. They discovered they had hours of footage of the pavement after someone forgot to turn a camera off. They failed to take any linking shots, so they had to rush to film them during the editing process. While trying to cross a bridge on a bus, it got stuck, causing a massive traffic backup and a delay in filming. Being on set with the band likely made people feel as though they were wasting their time.
Paul McCartney said people did not like The Beatles’ film
The on-set confusion was apparent to viewers. According to McCartney, people did not like the film, making it one of the band’s first flops.
“It was shown on BBC1 on Boxing Day, which is traditionally music hall and Bruce Forsyth and Jimmy Tarbuck time,” he said. “Now we had this very stoned show on, just when everyone’s getting over Christmas. I think a few people were surprised. The critics certainly had a field day and said, ‘Oh, disaster, disaster!’”
Producer George Martin said the film came across as pretentious to audiences.
“Magical Mystery Tour was not really a success — in fact, that’s putting it mildly,” he said. “When it came out originally on British television, it was a colour film shown in black and white, because they didn’t have colour on BBC1 in those days. It looked awful and it was a disaster. Everyone said it was pretentious and overblown, but it was a kind of avant-garde video, if you like.”
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