Documentary film of The Beatles classic August 15, 1965 New York concert.
The Beatles at Shea Stadium is a fifty-minute-long documentary of The Beatles' August 15, 1965 concert at Shea Stadium in New York City, the highlight of the group's 1965 tour. The documentary was directed and produced by Bob Precht (under the Sullivan Productions Inc. banner), and Ed Sullivan introduced the band. The project was filmed by a large crew led by cinematographer Andrew Laszlo. Fourteen cameras were used to capture the euphoria and mass hysteria that was Beatlemania. The documentary first aired on BBC on March 1, 1966. It aired in the United States on ABC on January 10, 1967. The film captures not only the concert, the attendance of which was 55,600, the largest Beatles concert up to that time, but also the events leading up to the concert, including the Beatles' helicopter ride from Manhattan to Flushing Meadows, their preparation in the dressing room (i.e. the visiting baseball team's locker) at Shea Stadium, and clips from the show's other acts, including Motown singer Brenda Holloway ("I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)"), King Curtis ("Soul Twist"), Sounds Incorporated ("Fingertips"), and Killer Joe Piro and The Discothèque Dancers ("It's Not Unusual", "Downtown", "Can't Buy Me Love"), The Young Rascals and Cannibal & the Headhunters also performed but were not featured in the documentary. The concert had been presented by promoter Sid Bernstein. The concert itself was a milestone in popular music history as the first major stadium concert. The documentary was a highlight of the 1995 Beatles Anthology series, which featured extensive clips from the film.
