Happy 210th birthday Charles Dickens!
February 7 being Dickens' birthday is funny because the only other
people who can compare to his impact on culture and massive popularity
are The Beatles, and it was on a February 7 that they landed in America, ie the
single greatest moment in pop culture of the last century (or more.) I wonder how Dickens' travels of America would compare had there been footage:
Arriving in Boston on January 22, 1842 Dickens was at once mobbed and generally given the adulation afforded four other young Englishmen who would invade America more than a century later.
Dickens at first reveled in the attention but soon the never-ending demand of his time began to wear on his enthusiasm. He complained in a letter to his friend John Forster "I can do nothing that I want to do, go nowhere where I want to go, and see nothing that I want to see. If I turn into the street, I am followed by a multitude."
The writing of A Hard Day's Night:
The screenplay was written by Alun Owen, and he had shown an aptitude for Liverpudlian dialogue. Owen spent several days with the group, who told him their lives were like "a train and a room and a car and a room and a room and a room"; Owen wrote the script from the viewpoint that The Beatles had become prisoners of their own fame, their schedule of performances and studio work having become punishing.
Let's hear it for the date February 7!
Here's Dickens now, waiting for that Beatles $$$$ to come rolling in...
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