"The First U.S. Visit"

When the Beatles first visited America in February 1964, a film crew videotaped hours of footage of the group as they traveled to New York, Washington, and Miami to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. Besides filming the performances, they also taped footage of the Beatles attending press conferences and photo shoots, as well as goofing around in their hotel rooms. The result was "The First U.S. Visit" - an 80-minute film released on DVD by MPI home video in 1998.

Like all of MPI's Beatles releases, this DVD is now out of print. But I obtained one from Ebay a few months ago and enjoyed it immensely. It's amazing how much of this "real-life" footage resembles the scenes from "A Hard Day's Night" - the fans chasing down the limo, the train ride...the Beatles even visit a night club! It's an amazing film, and I highly recommend it if you can get your hands on it!

A while ago, I decided to make some screencaps from the film, and here is the result! There are no photos from the Ed Sullivan performances - I may add some later, but I was originally interested in just capturing candid moments from the film. Also, unlike the "HELP!" screencaps, these images have been cropped, because I couldn't get many decent "full screen" images from the DVD. The images are split into two pages, and they are arranged chronologically according to the film. Enjoy!