![]() Word quickly traveled to the States where, 9,000 miles away in L.A., Daily Variety's headline declared, "BEATLES PRODUCE FIRST FLOP WITH YULE FILM." Even The Beatles' musical director and good friend George Martin recalled, "It looked awful and it was a disaster. "Blatant rubbish," declared the Daily Express, ".The bigger they are, the harder they fall." The film premiered on BBC TV the day after Christmas in 1967. (This was done, in violation of union rules, after the actual shooting was over Paul hopped a plane to France and brought a friend to operate the camera.) Paul's song "Fool on the Hill" is played over this uncharacteristically intimate scene in the otherwise diluted-with-too-many-characters Magical Mystery Tour. Paul filmed a likable sequence of himself jumping around and cavorting alone in the hills of Nice, France. It is the third film that starred the band and depicts a group of people on a coach tour who experience strange happenings caused by magicians. There's also a rare scene of the Fab Four dressed to the nines, in formal white tie and tails, singing "Your Mother Should Know" and doing a Fred Astaire-style ballroom dance routine. Magical Mystery Tour is a 1967 British made-for-television musical film directed by and starring the Beatles. The Beatles first movie since 'Help' (1965) was largely Paul McCartneys project. We filled it in as we went along." So, with no script to speak of, the Fab Four rented a coach and hand-lettered it as the "Magical Mystery Tour," and off they went, with the hope that this mysterious scenario might somehow prove interesting and entertaining. The Beatles charter a special bus for a surreal mystery tour. According to Ringo Starr: "Paul had a great piece of paper-just a blank piece of paper with a circle on it. A few days after Epstein's funeral, the boys gathered together and had a meeting. ![]() The idea lay dormant until late August of 1967, when The Beatles' loyal and dedicated (and irreplaceable) manager Brian Epstein died of a drug overdose. ![]() While on the plane, Paul took a big piece of paper and drew a pie chart, hoping to fill in the blank sections with entertaining ideas for a mystery tour. At the time, "Mystery Tours" were all the rage in England-these being low-budget weekend getaways, groups of people riding overnight on a bus to a surprise destination. The genesis of the disaster known as Magical Mystery Tour was a flight Paul McCartney took from America to England in April 1967. Did you know The Beatles made a TV movie? Magical Mystery Tour (1967) was their one and only attempt, but it holds another unique place in Beatles history-it was the first, and unequivocally the biggest, flop of their storied career.
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