Richard Lester was the guy who captured the heyday of The Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, two films that showcased the group’s spirit, energy, talent and sense of humor.
But today, the 79-year-old filmmaker lives a quiet life of retirement in Spain, well-remembered for his cinematic contributions beyond bringing Beatlemania to the big screen.
Although you may assume he is British by reviewing his credits over a career that spanned from the 1950s through 1991, Lester is actually a Philadelphia native. A graduate in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, he got his start in media by working at the Philly CBS-TV affiliate, quickly rising from stagehand to director. A trip to London led to a career there, first directing TV detective stories, and then collaborating on comedy series with the cast members of the radio-based The Goon Show—Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and others. The affiliation led to the eleven-minute 1960 short with Sellers called The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film, a plotless tribute to Buster Keaton and other silent clowns, which garnered an Oscar nomination.
This cheaply and quickly made effort also caught the attention of John Lennon, who helped Lester get the gig to direct 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night. The feature captured the frenzied existence of the Fab Four, cinema verite style, with a side plot revolving around Paul’s fictional grandfather. Lester and the group quickly went into followup mode with 1965’s Help!, a globetrotting secret agent spoof wrapping Beatles songs around a goofy plot about Ringo possessing a much-desired sacrificial ring. Lester’s colorful lensing and flashy, quick-paced editing style, which incorporated such tunes as Ticket to Ride, You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away and the title song, trumpeted a fresh, new style reflecting “Swinging London” and the times. Also in ’65, Lester employed some of the same cinematic tricks forThe Knack…and How to Get It, in which lovelorn London schoolteacher/landlord Michael Crawford tries to win over country gal Rita Tushingham before swinging tenant Ray Brooks can. Years later, MTV gave Lester a special award for his contributions to the development of music videos based on these early films.
Lester also collaborated with Lennon on 1967’s How I Won the War, which is now being re-issued on DVD in a special edition with a deluxe book. While set during World War II, the film plays as an allegory to the madness of the Vietnam War. Crawford, who would later gain success in the lead of the musical The Phantom of the Opera, plays a much-loathed British officer ordered to build a cricket field behind enemy lines in North Africa and who risks his troops’ lives in order to complete his mission. Throughout his career, Lester has been criticized for being obtrusive, letting his style get in the way of the story; here, the practice reaches an all-time level, as he uses slapstick, camera effects, narration, musical cues (the theme from Lawrence of Arabia) and other trickery to derail the narrative. There’s a method to his visual madness here, although taking How I Won the War in for the first time can often be disconcerting; it’s not an easy film to like. While he may have been advertised as the star, Lennon’s role is essentially a supporting part as John Lennon, sporting granny glasses, being sardonic, and speaking like you would expect him to.
Earlier, based on his success with the Beatles, Lester was given an opportunity to bring his unconventional touch and love for silent cinema and burlesque to the screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical farce A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Like How I Won the War, the film was a mixed grab bag of visual tricks; Zero Mostel reprised the role he won a Tony for on Broadway as the Roman slave scheming his way to freedom. Lester dropped several songs from the original soundtrack, and cast Crawford with show biz vets Jack Gilford, Phil Silvers and Lester’s hero Buster Keaton (in his last film role. The director turned up the chaos with speedy editing, elaborate dancing sequences and loads of slapshtick.
Few would argue, however, that Lester’s style wasn’t appropriate for The Three Musketeers (1974) and The Four Musketeers (1975), filmed simultaneously for father-and-son producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind. With engaging all-star casts, expertly choreographed sword-fighting, an epic sweep, lovely scenery and sharply scripted dialogue (from George Macdonald Fraser, with whom the director would later collaborate with on Royal Flash) , the films clicked wonderfully around the world.
For this reason, Lester was recruited by the Salkinds to finish the directing chores on Superman II, after the producers had a falling out with original helmer Richard Donner. Overall, the film is lighter and more comic book-y in tone than Donner’s more reverent original, but is it better? Fans still argue the point, although there’s little argument that even Lester’s light touch couldn’t save Superman III, which shook out, essentially, as Superman Meets Richard Pryor.
Between big productions such as the Superman and Musketeers movies, Lester has shown versatility both in choosing subjects and throwing a curveball to audiences expecting his signature chaotic mode. He’s done complex dramas about the nature of love and facing middle age (Petulia, with Julie Christie and George C. Scott, set in Swinging London, and Robin and Marian, with Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn, set in Sherwood Forest); a taut disaster film (Juggernaut); a period drama set against the backdrop of the Cuban Revolution (Cuba); a wildly un-PC version of a hit Broadway farce (The Ritz); sequels to highly successful efforts (Mouse on the Moon, a follow-up to The Mouse That Roared, and Butch and Sundance: The Early Days); a cult favorite (The Bed Sitting Room); and the criminally overlooked 1984 comedy Finders Keepers, in which crook Michael O’Keefe disguises himself as a soldier escorting the corpse of dead serviceman on a train in order to pull off a robbery.
The director’s last screen credit will likely be the 1991 Paul McCartney concert film Get Back. However, it was after 1989’s The Return of the Musketeers that Lester really decided to call it a day, after actor Roy Kinnear, his friend and frequent collaborator, died in a production accident involving a horse.
While Richard Lester is—and probably always will be—primarily remembered as the man who filmed The Beatles, there certainly is a lot more to his career than the flicks he made with Paul, John, George and Ringo. For the Beatles movies and all of his screen eccentricities, we love him, yeah, yeah, yeah.