Various locations today through March 6th - London to the West Country
Today, the Beatles became film actors for the first time, hurriedly joining the closed-shop actor's union Equity only minutes beforehand, on the platform at Paddington Station. They were proposed and seconded by Wilfrid Brambell and Norman Rossington, the two main support players in the group's debut feature film, which, for the moment was untitled. They were all gathered at Paddington for a purpose, of course, the first six day's shooting - Monday to Friday of this first week was to take place on a train. Hire of the train and the track facilities set back Proscenium Films, producer Walter Shenson's company, making the film for United Artists at a tidy sum of £600 per day, but the results were certainly worthwhile. At 8:30 this first day, amid scenes of Beatlemania at Paddinton Station, the train pulled out from Platform Five and headed for the West Country.
No actual shooting was done at Paddinton, however, the film's opening sequence, shot at a London station, was done instead at Marylebone. The Beatles decided after this first day that they could board the train more discreetly elsewhere, so for the remaining five days of shooting they embarked at Acton Main Line, in west London. Similarly, they never returned to Paddington in the evenings, jumping out at interim suburban stations like Acton Main Line, West Ealing, Westbourne Park and Hayes & Harlington, where they would be met by their chauffeur-driven car.
