The Beatles were always a rather cheeky lot.
That’s certainly evident in this previously unreleased silent footage debuted Tuesday by Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA). The 49-second clip was originally shot by Australian dancer and make-up artist, Dawn Swane.
All four band members, Paul, John, Ringo and George, are captured having their makeup done and pulling faces at the camera before a BBC television special, The Music of Lennon & McCartney, way back in 1965.
Swane worked at Granada TV in Manchester, UK, and was filming in the makeup room when members of the band started messing about with her camera as they drank champagne.
“I don’t know if it was John or if it was Ringo but they took the camera off me and said, ‘This is no way to use a camera’ and they sort of jiggled it upside down and inside out a bit, and everybody was just mucking around,” Swane said in a statement provided by the NFSA. “But that was great. I mean they were a nice group of people. They really were.”
The footage is part of Swane’s collection, which has been donated to the NFSA. Other clips feature celebrities such as Michael Caine on the set of television drama The Other Man in 1964.
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