With The Beatles: Rock Band and the remastered reissues of the entire Beatles catalog hitting shelves this week, we here at MovieRetriever.com started thinking about our favorite Beatle movie moments. Then, we started talking about the moments that never actually happened. We’re not saying we were lost in some sort of drug-induced Sixties flashback, but rather we were thinking about the several unrealized films that the band never made. Sure, A Hard Day’s Night is fantastic, Help! has its own unique charm, Yellow Submarine is sublime, and Magical Mystery Tour and Let It Be are pretty darn good filmic time capsules. But, wouldn’t it have been cool to have seen a version of The Lord of the Rings starring the Beatles? That’s just one of the many film projects that were rejected by the band that should cause even the most casual Beatle fan to wonder what might have been.

Prior to the initial wave of American Beatlemania back in the early 1960s, the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein signed the band to a three-picture contract with United Artists. A Hard Day’s Night and Help! quickly fulfilled two-thirds of their obligation. Following the critical and commercial success of these films, Walter Shenson, the producer of both films, began looking for a third property for the Fab Four. Several projects were considered, announced, and ultimately abandoned. Among the several un-produced Beatle film projects were ideas ranging from the wistful (A Talent for Loving), the silly (The Three Musketeers), the absurd (The Lord of the Rings), the avant-garde (Shades of a Personality), and the just plain weird (Up Against It). But, it is Joe Orton’s Up Against It that proves particularly intriguing. This never-was Beatle film’s tragic history, gifted yet cursed author, and rather bizarre themes and motifs (that seemed designed to shatter the wholesome Beatle image) make it a fascinating footnote in the history of the band.

The first proposed third film was titled A Talent for Loving. Based on the novel by Richard Condon (who had previously penned The Manchurian Candidate), the film was supposed to follow four Liverpudlian pioneers in the old west, include a harrowing horse race across the country, and the affections of well-to-do (and presumably beautiful) young woman. A Talent for Loving was even officially announced as the Beatles next film in early 1965. But, by June, the film had been abandoned and the search for a third project continued. The film would later be made into a vehicle for Richard Widmark and Topol called Gun Crazy.

Other projects were suggested, including The Lord of the Rings and The Three Musketeers, and ultimately rejected. A collaboration with Walt Disney on the animated film The Jungle Book was also discussed around this time. It was hoped that the Beatles would record the music and even make a brief appearance in the film. John Lennon was vehemently opposed to the idea and refused to even consider the possibility. Lennon, however, had been championing a Lord of the Rings project (he planned on playing Gollum with Paul McCartney as Frodo, George Harrison as Gandalf, and Ringo Starr as Frodo’s confidant Sam). That project was shelved when the film rights were refused by the Tolkien estate. But it’s certainly intriguing to think about what a Beatles version of Tolkien’s epic drama might have looked like with 1960s-era special effects and the influence of the burgeoning “hippie” sensibility (if films like Barbarella are any indication, it is perhaps best that the project died).

In retrospect, the comedic Three Musketeers seems the more natural, as well as logical, choice for a Beatles project (although the physical comedy the film would have demanded might have proven difficult for them). But, since the Beatles had outgrown the loveable mop-top image of their earlier films and were no longer interested in simply playing themselves, the film was scrapped. (Richard Lester, who directed the first two Beatle films, would enjoy great success directing a series of “Musketeer” movies made in much the same vein as the one proposed to the Beatles.) The Beatles had no desire to play such a homogenized filmic version of themselves. Indeed, to do so would have amounted to little more than self-parody as well as cheapen the artistic achievements of their first two films. The Beatles were well aware of the cookie-cutter approach to movies that Elvis Presley had taken and were adamant that they wouldn’t follow the same path and continued to look for a bold, new film that would compliment their new musical directions and burgeoning individual personalities.

Consequently, Shenson continued his search for a third film for the Beatles aware that they would more than likely reject anything that remotely resembled their two earlier films. In fact, as Roy Carr recounts in The Beatles at the Movies (New York: HarperPerennial, 1996), Shenson went so far as to announce in late 1966 that the Beatles next film would feature the Beatles playing not the Beatles but rather “four characters who look, think and talk like the Beatles but are [in fact] different characters.” “The only other criteria,” Shenson elaborated, “would be that any new Beatles movie would have to be contemporary. They don’t want to do a period story” (92). The script that successfully met Shenson’s somewhat contradictory requirements was originally titled Beatle 3 and later changed to Shades of a Personality. The film was written by Owen Holder and was to be directed by Michelangelo Antonioni (the influential maker of Blow-Up) as stalwart Lester was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts.

The rather bizarre and confusing plot of the film was centered around a character (played by one of the Beatles) who suffers from a three-way split personality (characters the remaining Beatles would portray). Unfortunately, additional schedule conflicts and Shenson’s belief that the script wasn’t quite good enough forced a continued search for a “quality” writer. Eventually, according to Philip Norman in Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation (New York: Fireside, 1981), “a script was commissioned from Joe Orton, the young, working-class dramatist whose macabre comedies, Loot and Entertaining Mr. Sloane, had each been huge West End successes” (278). Orton fashioned Shades of a Personality into Up Against It by taking the original premise and combining it with his earlier (The Silver Bucket) and current projects (The Vision of Gombold Proval). The script, as described by Orton himself in The Beatles at the Movies, contained “political assassination, guerrilla warfare, and tranvestism” and called for the Beatles to “have been caught in-flagrant, become involved in dubious political activity, dressed as women, committed murder, been put in prison, and committed adultery” (133). Orton completed his script at the end of February 1967. It was returned in early April without explanation.

It is easy to understand why Orton’s script was rejected. The Beatles’ public image was still under the dogged control of Brian Epstein and Up Against It would definitely have hurt that image. Paul McCartney, according to Carr, was more candid with the reason the Beatles rejected the script: “The reason why we didn’t do Up Against It wasn’t because it was too far out or anything like that. We didn’t do it because it was gay. We weren’t gay and really that was all there was to it. It was quite simple, really. Brian was gay, and so he and the gay crowd could appreciate it. Now, it wasn’t that we were anti-gay—just that we, The Beatles, weren’t gay” (135). However, if the Beatles were indeed interested in completely shedding their mop-top image, then perhaps a project such as this would have been perfect.

It is more likely that they merely had had enough of making movies and wanted to focus on their personal lives as well as their music. It was during this time that the Yellow Submarine animated project found momentum. This was a project the Beatles had initially agreed to believing it would fulfill their contractual obligation to United Artists. When it turned out that it would not, the Beatles lost interest in the film. But the negative reaction to the self-made Magical Mystery Tour and the positive press Yellow Submarine was garnering quickly won them over (it would seem that the Beatles were as image conscious as their manager was). Ultimately, the third film owed to United Artists would have to wait another two years. The story of Up Against It ended tragically when it was discovered that Kenneth Halliwell, Orton’s lover, had savagely murdered the young playwright and then killed himself. In a bizarre twist of fate, Brian Epstein died nine days later and the search for a third Beatles’ film project effectively ended.

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