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wMelissa's AP stories |
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Here are my stories whose links are no longer available. Only the ones with bylines are included here, for the non-bylined ones that I found more interesting, go to melswar.blogspot.com. Thanks! Let me know what you think!
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wThursday, January 09, 2003 |
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January 7, 2003
Beatles photos, memorabilia on display
By MELISSA MANSFIELD
Associated Press Writer
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) _ Harry Benson was in the room when the Beatles found out they would be playing the Ed Sullivan Show. He was there when "I Want to Hold Your Hand" landed in the Top 10. He photographed them joking around, composing classics and flying to America.
Along with 80 of the photojournalist's works of the Fab Four, the Albany Institute of History and Art has also collected memorabilia from local fans for its exhibit, "The Beatles: Now and Then."
Through his photos, Benson captured personal and intimate details of the Beatles during their first American tour, offering insight into the world of the young rock icons and those around them.
Benson was working at a daily newspaper in Scotland in 1964 when his editor sent him to Paris to cover the Beatles. There, he followed them as they "played tourist," taking pictures. Among some of Benson's photos, Paul McCartney and George Harrison pick out postcards of the Eiffel Tower and John Lennon mimics a bust of Napoleon.
The night they found out they were going to America, Lennon banged McCartney in the head with a pillow, and the others followed, in what Benson labeled "the pillow fight" photos. These are his favorites, he said in a recent interview. The best, he believes, is the one with the four of them about to fall on one another.
"It's a portrait with movement. It's perfect," Benson said.
Upon their arrival at an airport in Florida, local beauty queens followed the boys to the beach where Benson continued to shoot. In one picture, Ringo Starr talks to one thrilled girl in the waves while others in bikinis surround him.
"To say that a lot of women were interested in meeting the Beatles would be a gross understatement," Benson wrote in his book "The Beatles Now and Then," which contains most of the photos on display.
The Beatles aren't the only stars in the images. A grinning Ed Sullivan in a "mop-top" wig warms up the audience before his show, and Cassius Clay _ before the boxer became Muhammed Ali _ hams it up with the lads in other photographs.
Benson also documents the fans. Teenage girls peeking in the limo windows outside a New York City theater are frozen in mid-scream, while a close up of a shrieking blonde girl in Copenhagen reminds viewers of the chaos surrounding the band.
In "The Show Begins," four silhouettes are headed to a stage, with blinding bright lights washing out a crowd Benson describes as "deafening."
"All the time it was growing. You could see Beatle-mania getting bigger and bigger," Benson said. "You could feel this wave building up and the crowds were getting bigger and bigger."
Along with this new level of fame came a flood of product endorsements, pencil boxes and newsletters depicting the young men.
"The Beatles generated a lot of stuff," said Tammis Groft, deputy director of collections and exhibitions at the Albany museum. The exhibit also includes more than 100 objects collected from the community, from a 1964 "Flip Your Wig" game, to inflatable dolls that were part of a soap display in 1966, to a pin that reads: "I am a Beatles fan. In case of emergency call Paul or Ringo."
The exhibit runs through March 2.
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On the Web:
www.albanyinstitute.org
posted by
Melissa at 2:50 PM
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