I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Plot synopsis:
Ed Sullivan prepares the ushers for the Beatles' performance on his show. In Maplewood, New Jersey, Rosie and Pam visit the record shop. Janis, the owner’s daughter, hates the Beatles and prefers folk music. Grace wants to rent a limo, so they can pull up to the Beatles hotel, and get exclusive photos of the band. The girls recruit shy Larry DuBois, the local undertaker’s son, as he has access to limos. They leave for New York City and on the way pick up Tony--a brash, streetwise guy. After driving all night, they arrive in New York early on the morning of February 9, 1964. When they pull up at the hotel, Grace, Rosie and Pam sneak in, while Larry pulls the limo with Tony and Janis in it to the side of the building. Once inside, Grace and Rosie sneak into a service elevator, while Pam is left in the basement in a storage closet. Pam (who was the only one not really interested in seeing the Beatles, as she is engaged) sees them leave the hotel as they go to rehearse. Meanwhile, Grace gets off on the 11th floor. Rosie rides up to the 12th, where the Beatles’ room is located. She is caught, escapes and meets Richard Klaus, a fellow Beatles fan who is hiding out in a room in the hotel. Pam hides in a food cart and is taken to the Beatles’ room, where she handles all their stuff and hides under John’s bed. Grace is caught too, so she goes to the CBS studio, where a guard tells her that for 50 dollars he will let her in backstage while the show is on. Richard and Rosie are tossed from the hotel. Janis meet Peter, a kid whose dad will give him three tickets to The Ed Sullivan Show if he will get his Beatles style hair cut into a crew cut. She recruits Tony to steal the dad’s wallet and get the tickets. Larry asks Grace to the Valentine’s Day dance at school, but she brushes him off.
Grace decides to take the place of a prostitute who has an encounter at the hotel to get the 50 dollars she needs. Rosie knows the question on the radio call in to win tickets, so she uses the room key she still has, goes to the room, calls in and wins two tickets. Richard then strands them in the elevator. Pam is caught, but interviewed by the press. Her fiancé arrives to get her, but she uses the ticket she was given by the Beatles roadie Neil Aspinall to see the show. Once in the john’s room, Grace can’t go through with it and hides, but takes photos of the john and the hooker and blackmails him into giving her 50 dollars. He attacks her, but Larry saves her. Tony lifts the dad’s wallet. It’s empty, but they get the tickets anyway. Richard and Rosie escape from the elevator and get to the show. Tony’s effort to sabotage the show fails. Larry parks the limo beside CBS in an alley and is about to be arrested for improper parking and driving without a license, but Grace uses the 50 dollars to bribe the cop in to letting him go, but now she can’t get backstage and get her photos. Grace accepts Larry’s invitation to the dance. On leaving the show the Beatles take a wrong turn and end up in Larry’s limo. They drive away, pursued by a mob of screaming fans, while Grace snaps away.

Tags: cult, comedy, adult comedy

Review:
I never saw this until just today--I was afraid it would turn out to be a dumb film like "Beatlemania!" was--but it turned out to be one of the innocently charming films I've ever seen.I am a big Beatles admirer, but I wasn't around for this particular time period (I grew up with them during the 70s instead).
LITERALLY) go through their exciting and silly adventure in their attempts to get tickets.I was really laughing HARD while watching this one, and highly recommend it!Out of all the characters, the one whom I fell in love with the most was the one young girl who wanted more than anything else in the world to see her beloved Paul McCartney.
She wanted SO much to see Paul, and it was both funny and terribly heartbreaking at the same time to watch her rush into a phone booth to call the radio station with the correct answer for a Beatles trivia contest and be so anxious with her handful of dimes that she practically *THROWS* them at the phone.My favorite lines declaring the Beatles one of life's happiest pleasures come at a scene when the bride-to-be is driving with her future husband (who gives the impression with his short onscreen time that he'd be a real CREEP to her!).
So for both Beatle fans and non-fans, I think it's safe for me to say that this movie works as both a fun piece of nostalgia and a satirical look of human nature gone wild and how crazy some will go when it comes to beloved icons.
It's hysterically funny from one point to another about these three young girls who are HUGE fans of the Beatles and would do anything just to see them on Ed Sullivan.
There is a scene that takes place about three quarters of the way through this film that is not only one of the ten funniest scenes in the history of movie-making, but probably does even a better job of summing up what the year 1964 was all about than  Dr. Strangelove.
The film, directed by Robert Zemekis and produced by Steven Spielberg, is about the pandemonium that ensued when the Beatles came to America to play for Ed Sullivan.
Nancy Allen and Theresa Saldana are great(what ever happened to her?) Wendie Jo Sperber as usual does a fine comedic performance, while Mark McClure and Eddie Deezen have funny little side roles.
A cast of unknowns with a young Robert Zemeckis as director made a movie as memorable as the Beatles themselves!
Especially Wendie Jo Sperber, who is the most hysterical of all the fans, and Nancy Allen, who actually gains access to their hotel room at one point.
The most important thing about the Beatles arriving in America in January of 1964 to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show is not even mentioned in I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
The Beatles coming to America was the first thing as a country we got any kind of excited about.I Wanna Hold Your Hand is the story of four young teen girls from New Jersey, Nancy Allen, Wendy Jo Sperber, Susan Kendall Newman, and Theresa Saldana and their quest to see the Beatles up close and personal and maybe get tickets to the Ed Sullivan Show.
I mean he comes off like SuperNerd, his lack of social graces is painful to watch.Pieces and whole songs from The Beatles are heard throughout the film, fans will love it.
Robert Zemeckis who directed and wrote the film had a real feel for those crazy times in New York in 1964..
I hope fans of this film will take a moment to remember her and her work to help others.** I Wanna Hold Your Hand was a movie that came and went very quickly in 1978.
Rosie (Wendie Jo Spreber) LOVES the Beatles; Janis (Susan Kendall Newman) hates them and wants to protest; Pam (Nancy Allen) is along for the ride and is getting married the next day; Grace (Theresa Saldana) is a reporter who wants an interview with them; Tony (Bobby DiCicco) is a hood and Larry (Marc McClure) drives them from NJ to NY to see them.
Various complications occur.I'm way too young to remember back then (I was only 1!) but I heard this perfectly captures exactly what it was like back then with the hundreds of screaming girls trying to see the Beatles.
Still, this is a must for Beatles fans and anyone who wants a good funny comedy.
"I Wanna Hold Your Hand" is a HILARIOUS and historical film-a must see for any true Beatles fan!
The Beatles played two sets that night on Sullivan and this film showed the program ending after they came on and did their thing which wasn't totally accurate but so what.
It's nothing more than fluff to be sure, a story about teenage girls who leave the comfortable suburbia of 1963 to find tickets to the Beatles' first appearance on American TV, the historic Ed Sullivan show.
But this one is good-natured, lively, and funny; the performances are good; there's a fine sense of the period (so many things were just beginning then); and I just like seeing a story about teenage fans.
With these people in charge, the latter wins out easily, and this first effort, released before the Spielberg-directed "1941," is perhaps the best of the Zemeckis/Gale collaborations.The setting of I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND is New York City, February 1964, just after the Beatles have landed.
A group of teenagers descend on the Ed Sullivan Theater with disparate motivations: a Fabs fanatic (Wendie Jo Sperber) who hooks up with Beatles obsessive Eddie Deezen (in, believe it or not, a flawless performance), an ambitious young photographer, Nancy Allen as the prudish, tentative bride-to-be who ends up in the Beatles' hotel room, and a stuck-up Peter, Paul & Mary fan determined to stamp out the Beatles.
Its dismal performance at the box-office (along with that of USED CARS) is still an injustice even if the movie has redeemed itself since.Check out the recently-released Universal DVD of I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND, with an excellent commentary by Zemeckis and the always-informative Gale (who, to be fair, does confuse Brian E.
This film is simply the best film to ever show how "Beatlemania" really was, it really gives you a feel of what it must have been like for the teens of 1964 anticipating the arrival of The Beatles on Ed Sullivan.
But hey this is a movie so dramatic license is needed, and watching the crowd go completely nuts as The Beatles perform "She Loves You" brings everything to a satisfying climax, in more ways than one apparently for Nancy's character.
And two years before John's "we are bigger than Jesus" comment (taken out of context of course, but John WAS a wimp for apologizing) it is good to see that God wasn't going to allow anything to stop The Beatles broadcast!The one bad thing about this film is that it has Steven Spielberg's name on it, because he is an overrated hack, but thankfully he is just the "executive producer" and didn't actually direct the film, because then it'd be horrible..
I'm a huge fan of Apatow films and others of the like, those movies have far more laughs per minute than "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" but will they still be entertaining 30 years from now?
"I Wanna Hold Your Hand" is the hysterical story of young girls who want to see the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, and the lengths that they go to achieve their goal.Nancy Allen, Teresa Saldana, and the late Wendy Jo Sperber are the three crazed girls in this 1978 film, directed by Robert Zemeckis, who also helped write the script.
The film also stars Bobby DiCicco, Eddie Deezen, and Marc McClure.The film covers the events of February 9, 1964, the day the Beatles made their American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Janis Goldman plays a protester who thinks the Beatles are a corruptive force in the world of art."I Wanna Hold Your Hand" is heavy on slapstick, but much of the slapstick is very funny the way it's done.
Both of them, along with the rest of this fine cast, give wonderful performances.If you're a baby boomer, this is a great film for you to watch and relive the innocence of the time and the Beatle furor.
Being a younger generation Beatle fan, I watch this movie knowing what it might have been like during the Beatlemania days.The characters are great.
And i think about the main character here, Miss Rosie.It's an easy slapstick adventure, when people fall constantly, stupidity rules and luck has everything to do with the movie.There are very few Beatles songs in the film, and it seems it's always the same ones that play over and over again.
Zemeckis recreates a believable facsimile of that period when the world was on the cusp of a social and sexual revolution  a revolution embodied by Nancy Allen's character whose sexuality is awoken by one of the Beatles musical instruments in the film's one memorable scene and whose liberation is affirmed by her decision to ditch her commanding boyfriend.There are some funny moments here and the film's cheerful attitude just about carries it through the less funny moments  which grow more frequent as the film progresses.
Of the young cast, Allen was the only one who went on to any sort of sustained fame which is a surprise as, apart from Eddie Deezen, they all manage to avoid being annoying or reverting to stereotype.You'll probably enjoy this one while you watch it, and it will obviously mean more to those who were around when the Beatles first became famous, but it won't take long to fade from your memory..
As American Graffiti focuses on one night in the lives of a group of California teenagers, I Wanna Hold Your Hand goes across the plains two years later and focuses on A Day In the Life of Beatle-crazed teenagers hoping for a glimpse of the best band in history (their opinion which I share).
Supported by beatnik-folk-purist Susan Kendall Newman, jealous Beatle-hater and Four Season fan Bobby Di Ciccio, obsessive Beatle- geek Eddie Deezen and mild-mannered future Jimmy Olsen actor Marc McClure (see what I did there?) as an unlicensed getaway car driver (actually one of the limos from his father's funeral parlor), the girls fight a never-ending battle for an encounter with John, Paul, George, Ringo, and the American Way (sorry).
This movie made me think of the Hairspray yet to come at that time, as Rosie's character is what Tracy Turnblad might be like two years after desegregating the Corny Collins Show.
Finally, I think this movie, this film, this cinematic comedic masterpiece (and yes, I'm as obsessive a Beatles fan as they were) should be reissued through the Criterion Collection as it paints a very accurate as well as affectionately satirical picture of Beatlemania on "Sullivan Day".
I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND was the first film directed by Robert Zemeckis (it was also produced by Steven Spielberg).
It's a fictional comedy that plays on a winning idea of having a group of New Jersey teenagers traveling into New York City with the goal of meeting The Beatles on their historic first trip to the United States, one early February weekend in 1964.
The young actors here include: Nancy Allen (she plays an engaged girl who's too mature to get involved by something as trivial as The Beatles); Theresa Saldana (an aspiring reporter looking to snag exclusive photos of The Fab Four); Susan Kendall Newman (Paul Newman's daughter, playing a folk music lobbyist looking to expose the saccharine Beatles); Wendie Jo Sperber (a wildly obsessed Beatlemaniac who's in love with Paul); Eddie Deezen (bespectacled "geek actor for all seasons" with a serious Beatles addiction); and Bobby DiCicco and Marc McClure (two guys along for the ride who don't care much for the English quartet but tag along anyway to get the girls).The movie is quite a distant cousin away from the classic American GRAFFITI.
Watching this film and the antics of these characters is possibly the closest I will ever come to experiencing first hand what Beatlemania was like.
It was like I was an unofficial member of this group of kids as they are trying desperately to get tickets to see the Beatles live on the Ed Sullivan show, all this starting by them trying to sneak into the Beatles' hotel.I loved that Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale made a wonderful dynamic by NOT making all the characters involved Beatles fans which made the film that much more believable.
Their presence was a great contrast to the rest of the cast, especially Wendie Jo Sperber as the sweet, cherubic Rosie, the most fanatical of the bunch that at one point of the film, she literally throws herself from a moving car just so she can get to a phone booth to win Beatles tickets on a radio call-in contest.
The rest of the cast is rounded out by Nancy Allen as Pam, a bride-to-be roped into this adventure against her will and ends up having fortunate luck of accidentally ending up in the Beatles' hotel suite; Theresa Saldana as Grace, the career minded, future reporter who wants exclusive pictures of the band and will do anything(literally) to get them; Marc McClure as Larry, who has a crush on Grace and is willing to do anything to help her achieve her goal and Eddie Deezen as Richard who is Rosie's equally fanatical partner in crime as they reek havoc throughout the hotel.Another thing I thought was a great direction taken by Zemeckis and Gale was to use Beatle sound-a-likes, not look-a-likes and to have the guys' faces hidden.
The film made me feel like the latter, like I was actually there.So, long story short, the movie is a must-see for any Beatles fan.
Most of the early part of the film deals with the fans attempting to break into the Beatles' hotel room, the second half shows the girls attempting to gain admission to Sullivan's show.
There are some fairly slow spots about 3/4 through the film, but the climactic scenes about Ed Sullivan are very fresh and funny.The cast is fine, including Will Jordan with his on-target impersonation of Sullivan, and the actresses playing the fans (Nancy Allen, Wendie Jo Sperber, Theresa Saldana, etc.) are just wonderful.
Nancy Allen's adventures in the Beatles' hotel room--with her cuddling Paul McCartney's bass guitar and "harvesting" hair from a hairbrush--are hilarious and absolutely priceless.Just about everything clicks in this funny, happy film.
Except, where four teenagers in the latter make desperate attempts to acquire access to see glam rockers, KISS, eight New Jersey teenagers in I Wanna Hold Your Hand obsessively cramble for tickets to the taping of the famous 1964 episode of the Ed Sullivan show featuring the Beatles.The plot is also somewhat similar to the 1979 classic, Rock N' Roll High School (with the Ramones) and Shag (because the girls, about to face a weekend of crazy misadventures, want one crazy night of fun before their friend, Pam, get's married).
Viewers too young to know about the crazy crowds of screaming teenagers that the rock stars like the Beatles could command, may see this movie as a time capsule of American pop culture.
The teenagers in this movie were grossly obsessed, Richard "Ringo" (Eddie Deezen), who hid out in the Beatles hotel, collecting the grass or the carpet that they walked on.
If you like the Beatles or teen comedies like Shag and Rock N' Roll High School, then this movie is probably perfect for you..
Robert Zemeckis' directorial debut, this is an extremely funny comedy about six New Jersey teens and their trip to New York to see the Beatles' performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on February 9, 1964, the highest viewed television event in history up to that time.
Other than the Beatles' own films and documentaries, this was the first film about the Fab Four.The film has a great cast of then unknowns, most of whom went on to have solid film and/or television careers such as the late Wendie Jo Sperber, Marc McClure, Eddie Deezen, Nancy Allen, Theresa Saldana and Bobby Di Ciccio.
It's rare to find a performance that strident and, at the same time, ingratiating due to the actor's prowess for physical comedy (again, his physical shenanigans are, well, overblown, but I somehow found them riveting).All in all, this movie really isn't a seven--it's probably a six at best--but I cannot shake those scenes of Nancy Allen nor do I want to.
The film begins with Ed Sullivan (Played by Ed Sullivan look-a-like Will Jordan) on the set on his own show off air introducing the movie Patton style, setting the stage for just how big The Beatles had become by January 1964.
The film shows how Beatlemania provided an escape from the real world.Wendie Jo Sperber and Eddie Deezen (a voice forever implanted into my head from years of childhood exposure on Dexter's Laboratory) as Rosie and Ringo (as he calls himself) are the two most hyperactive of the cast members.
I'd do the same thing as well, not with The Beatles but there are other celebrities of whom I was in their hotel room I would be rubbing my face against everything they've touched and don't lie, you would too.I Wanna Hold Your Hand also features Paul Newman's daughter Susan Kendall Newman in her second of three film appearances.
If they actually did cast actors to play The Beatles in which we see their faces it would take you out of the film.
Like in Zemeckis' Forrest Gump years later, I Wanna Hold Your Hand combines fiction surrounding a historical event.