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Fifty years ago, the Beatles' anarchic debut film, A Hard Day's Night, wiped away the stuffy conventions of British teen cinema
IN JANUARY 1963, British cinemagoers were enticed by posters claiming that, "It's what happens when FOUR BOYS in a borrowed bus... (with built-in bunks and bath)...meet FOUR GIRLS with a single mission...MEN!!". For a mere 1/9d, the audience could see Summer Holiday - and vicariously experience the pleasures of sun and sea, while watching Cliff Richard sporting polyester shirts in many and various hues. The film became the second most popular film at the British box office of 1963; yet a mere 18 months later, the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night almost instantly relegated Cliff & Co to the ranks of the middle-aged.
Back in 1957, Nat Cohen and Stuart Levy of Anglo-Amalgamated, a company that specialised in low-budget films, produced The Tommy Steele Story, Britain's first teenage rock'n'roll musical. Just weeks after its release in June 1957, it had recouped its 15,000 production costs, going on to make a total profit of 100,000. The result was a spate of black-and-white rock'n'roll musicals, with 28-year-old "teenage" extras swaying amongst the potted plants to the happening sounds of Terry Dene.
By the early 1960s, such low-budget gems as the Billy Fury film Play It Cool were still the norm, although the genuinely ambitious The Young Ones was an alternative. That the latter was intended as much as a major British musical as it was a vehicle for Cliff Richard is made clear...