Anybody remember the Beatles?

[lsanderson]

Victor Spinetti, Favorite in Beatles Films, Dies at 82
By PAUL VITELLO
Published: June 19, 2012
Victor Spinetti, who was an established British film star in 1963 when he agreed to make a movie with a pop group called the Beatles and who became famous ever after as the only person besides the four Beatles to appear in all of their movies — “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Help!” and “Magical Mystery Tour” — died on Tuesday in London. He was 82. Moar

“A Hard Day’s Night” had just opened in movie theaters in New York in 1964 when “Oh What a Lovely War” had its Broadway premiere. Mr. Spinetti’s role — for which he won a Tony — called for him to appear onstage to open the play. And as he did, he later recalled, screaming erupted from a claque of Beatles fans in the balcony.

“He touched George!” one cried.

Mr. Spinetti said he improvised a solution: he promised the fans that if they behaved, they could sit in the front rows after the show, “and we’ll do a 10-minute semester on the Beatles, O.K.?”

The solution worked. But it became a nightly event. Beatles fans attended “Oh What a Lovely War” for months afterward, he said — not to see a serious play about the folly of war, but to find out what George, Ringo, John and Paul were really like.