Entertainment For Lively Minds
Hurt fieldings
I was watching A Hard Day's Night on DVD and found myself slightly puzzled by an unnecessary edit.
Back in 1964 my friends and I were all highly amused by George's response to the groundsman who turfs them off his field at the end of the Can't Buy Me Love sequence. The man says "I suppose you realise this is private property" and George said in the original "We're sorry we hurt your fieldings".
I remember this because we were so impressed by this line that it was regularly employed over the the next few months anytime anyone got in the slightest way annoyed. And we laughed every time.
However on the DVD this line has been edited and changed to "We're sorry we hurt your field, mister". Why was the original line changed?
A small point and a minor puzzle. Does anyone have any inside information on this?
- More from Carl Parker.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Hmmm...
I've just Googled it and there's nothing. Are you sure you weren't bamboozled by George's Scouse accent?
I've always known it as
"We're sorry we hurt your field, mister" going all the way back to 1964.
Me too
and I loved the line & repeated it endlessly. Now that you mention it (it had never occurred to me), I think a field/feeling pun was probably intended.
There's only one way to find out...
...original script!
http://www.aellea.com/script/AHARDDAYSNIGHT.txt
And, thanks to the wonders of the find function
So there we have it.
Who is
John George band?
I've always heard it as "...field, mister"
going back to when I first saw it.
Same
here, I'm afraid. Perhaps the OP hadn't washed behind his ears that day?
perhaps
Recommended?
Amd thanks to Mojo working for the script.Interesting to see if there's any discrepancies...
Thanks for contributions
It makes me wonder about the psychology of of all. The "fieldings" thing ran and ran among me and my schoolmates. Maybe one of us misheard, but convinced everyone else that this was the real line.
On a more prosaic note, thanks for the tip Badger, but over 20 years ago I'd been troubled by a series of ear infections. My GP referred me to the Ear, Nose & Throat hospital in Gray's Inn Road. The treatment there was little more than being asked "Do you use cotton buds", which I did. He than told me to stop using them and until a few months back I've been free of such problems ever since.
Ha!
"Thanks for the tip".
Nice one, Carl!
I was going to post a clip of
Paul Young's pre-solo career band here but having watched them on Youtube, I'm not sure it'd be a good thing to do.
Steve Davis, Dennis Taylor and Jimmy White...
should have been in a band of that name.
Still, the fact remains
that "fieldings" is better. Perhaps you and your mates could get together with an acoustic guitar and a four track and work your magic to polish up some old Beatles songs....?
Wasted lives
There we were, 8 years old and not realising our potential as comic geniuses. What could have been....
Out of that group of friends, one lives in New Zealand, the rest I have no idea about.
And alas too...
...that Frankie Howerd's scene ended up edited out and now lost to posterity.
The film's best critic
The Today programme presented a brief obituary of Robert Robinson, the TV and radio presenter, on Saturday. It started with the song A Hard Day's Night, and had an extract from his contemporary review of the film. Surprisingly, well to people like me who remember him as an amusing but slightly austere figure, like a university don, he understood the film straightaway.
"The Beatles and the film seem all of a piece. The film seems to really have grown out of them."
That's probably why it's lasted.
That is surprising
I quite liked Robert Robinson, his erudition and ability to play on words.
However he always seemed a bit sniffy with any Brain of Britain contestant able to answer a question on "popular music". Jazz seemed just about acceptable. But the ability to answer a pop music question would be met with gentle mockery.
Must have listened to many an Ask the Family and BoB in my time
and plenty of gentle mockery of Laurie Taylor iirc... fondly remember the parody on some R4 comedy where the Robinson figure introduced the show with
Tish, bosh, a-ha, o-ho...
...fiddle-de-dee, would that it were, would that it were...
No, I'm afraid, having seen a documentary on Ask The Family a while back, the vaguely remembered benign, professorial figure from the langourous days of 70s TV came across as frankly a bit pompous and sneering and his quiz show an uncomfortable vehicle for grandstanding middle class bores. even the theme music didn't seem as interesting as it used to...
Ask The Family
Always seemed to be populated by the kind of children who would have spent most of their time at school recovering from a constant merry-go-round of chinese burns, wedgies and head-flushings. As Leonard in 'Big Bang Theory' said, "my parents felt that calling me Leonard and putting me in advanced placement classes wasn't getting me beaten up enough".
Exactly
The kids on ATF were always specky swots who gave the impression they listened to classical music at home - by choice.
The parents meanwhile seemed uber square and super pushy and probably imposed a "no TV on a school night" rule.
The entire thing was the embodiment of white middle class 60s/70s Britain.
'No TV on a school night'
unless it was
1) educational, preferably featuring David Attenborough and/or Kenneth Clark, and
2) On the BBC.
"The Be-Attles?"
Really, just look at them. You know that in their house there is AT LEAST one violin or cello per child. Plus a piano for the parents.
Those kids
are probably commissioning editors at BBC2 now.
Looks like Robinson had all but given up on the famous comb over at that stage, too.
Commissioning eds have a wider range of origins ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bea_Ballard
http://www.apieceofmonologue.com/2009/12/bea-ballard-on-her-father-j-g-b...
However I learned (or tried to learn) the violin at 6, and my parents had no telly at all between my age 10 and age 15. For some reason my brother and I don't seem to feel the same kind of resentment to them that above posters seem to feel we should ;-);-). In fact I think as time passes it seems ever clearer why they took the various decisions that they did. But then I listened to classical music voluntarily as I child ... so help me ;-).
Similar story here...
No TV in the house at all until I was 12.
I used to listen to choral music of my own free will when I could get it and was willing to practice to the point where I got a choral scholarship to Worcester Cathedral choir school at age 7. I spent the next 5-6 years doing little other than practicing choral pieces or dressed in my choirboy outfit singing at services in the cath.
Of course, in parallel with that I was also listening to 208 under the bedclothes and, from 1962 the HJHs. :-)
I think for me, as with many, the fact that
my parents weren't v interested in pop (wouldn't have called it rock) helped make it more interesting to me when I really started to listen circa 76 or so, but they *did* buy us the Beatles Red, not sure when though---before 75 I'd say ...
...earlier on when pushed in class to name my favourite record, aged 12ish, I think I said Fleetwood Mac's Albatross ...obviously had dem prep school blues ...
Has it remained something...
...around your neck ever since, though?
I'll wait 'til 3 of you pass by
and I'll stop you and tell you about it ...
And talking of the blues
as we weren't, really, this made me laugh:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/eric-clapton-to-release-new-album-inspi...
the grandstanding middle class bores
eh? ... tmftl
..
Ah, but the eerie theme tune...
...was wonderful and had a touch of John Barry about it. Those revolving playing cards in the titles and the mystery object which zoomed out until the eureka moment...
I do remember feeling somewhat removed from the families featured as a child, though.
Both families
look special needs there.
And I wonder exactly what a "computer consultant" entailed back whenever that was filmed? Changing the reel-to-reel tapes, possibly?
No Fry and Laurie
pastiche posted yet?
Go on then...