FAB FOUR FILMING HELP! IN LONDON band on the run?
were smoking. Dick knew very little would get done after lunch.
We seldom got past the first line of the script.
“We had hysterics... no one could do anything. Dick would say, ‘No, boys, could we do it again?’ It was just that we had a lot of fun – a lot of fun in those days.”
Sir Paul McCartney, 78, has said: “We showed up a bit stoned, smiled a lot and hoped we’d get through. Every time we’d turn round to the camera tears were streaming down our faces.”
The precious pictures have lain in a filing cabinet for 55 years. Derek, 75, died of pancreatic cancer in 2009 and
Ringo gets a little nudge from George
his widow Angela only recently began sifting through his mountain of prints.
Angela, 70, says: “Derek always had his Leica camera around his neck and as soon as he heard a fuss in the street he went out to investigate.
“He had to run really fast to keep up. When a car whisked The Beatles off to another location, Derek jumped in a taxi and followed. Bystanders look immaculate not because they were models or extras, but because they are in a very fashionable street at the height of the Swinging Sixties.”
Help! came out two months later. The spy spoof told of Ringo receiving a valuable ring from a fan, then being pursued by an Indian death cult. Comedian Alfie Bass appears in a turban as a doorman in one scene.
Derek, who worked for Life & Time magazines before going freelance, shot The
Beatles again two years later at Abbey Road Studios. His pictures feature in a new book, Beatlemania 1963-1965: Four Photographers on the Fab Four, released in autumn.
Angela says: “Every time Beatles memorabilia sold for a fortune, Derek and I would remind ourselves to look out his pictures. But we never did. We were not money oriented. Although I kick myself every time I think of all the signed Beatles’ albums we lost.” Derek, who founded the Aspect Picture Library, had a talent for connecting with subjects, including actors Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole and jazz legend Louis Armstrong.
But former PM Margaret Thatcher brought a photoshoot to a halt after a discussion about one picture which didn’t show her “best side”.
It was one of the rare occasions a subject gave him A Hard Day’s Night.