I Wanna Hold Your Hand

One of the many pleasures of 1978's I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND is seeing the genesis of ideas  director Robert Zemeckis and his co-writer Bob Gale would regurgitate in their later, far more successful (in terms of box office and otherwise) movies.  Near the end of this rollicking saga of a group of teenagers who desperately try to glimpse the Beatles before, during, and after their 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, there are two scenes to which you can draw a straight line to BACK TO THE FUTURE.  Through much of the movie you can see the beginnings of the honing of a manic style that would characterize many later Zemeckis efforts.  While the Bobs' chops may not have been fully developed at this stage, this is still a wildly fun, destructive, and manic movie, one that sadly didn't quite find an audience during its original release.

Rosie (Wendie Jo Sperber) is positively mad for the Beatles (especially Paul, who she wants to marry).  If only she could get tickets to the show.  Her pal Grace (Theresa Saldana) also wants to go, mainly because she seeks a career in journalism and wants to get some coveted pictures.  Pam (Nancy Allen) is a day away from eloping with her beau and ambivalent about the Fab Four.  Janis (Susan Kendall Newman) despises the lads and seeks to get her protests on national TV.   Lunkhead greaser Tony (Bobby Di Ciccio) would rather hear Frankie Valli or some other white bread pop on his radio.  They will all pile into Larry's (Marc McClure) limo - actually a hearse owned by his father, a mortician - and head for the Plaza Hotel in New York City, which the filmmakers do a reasonable job of recreating on a backlot.

From the opening scene in the record store to the close in an alley behind the Ed Sullivan Theater, I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND (of course named after a Beatles tune) rather breathlessly follows the kids as they breach security at the hotel and scramble at every opportunity to get to the taping.  Rosie literally throws change at pay phones when she knows the answer to trivia questions on the radio.  In fact, Murray the K even makes an appearance in this movie.  Pam will find herself (after hiding on a room service cart) in the Beatles' suite while they're out and discover she really is a fan.  Boy, is she! Grace will make a difficult decision when a rather salacious opportunity to make $50 arises.  This will be necessary after her scam of selling pieces of bedsheets the Beatles actually slept on goes awry.  In my favorite plot thread, Janis and Tony meet a young man named Peter (Christian Juttner) who's locked in a battle with his stern father for those coveted tickets - he'll get 'em only if he agrees to get his mop top cut.

The film does not entirely sustain its energy as the pace does slacken here and there, but I felt every moment was essential, even the curiously seamy ones (Pam licking the neck of Paul's bass guitar, what Grace observes in a hotel room).  Zemeckis often displayed a bit of a naughty undercurrent in his otherwise mainstream entertainments.  His and Gale's grimier tendencies would go full tilt in their next feature, USED CARS. 

We never get a good look at the band, and the director cleverly gets around having to hire actors who resemble them by using long shots or points of view from under a bed (where Pam is hiding).  There's plenty of ingenuity on display in I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND, and to my eyes this is a strong debut.  The entire cast is terrific.  This includes the always reliable Eddie Deezen who plays an elevator attendant named Richard who renamed himself Ringo, just like Mr. Starkey did, love.  And the movie has Dick Miller as a cop.