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A Hard Day's Night as a Musical Biopic of the Post-Studio Era

A brief review of the state of the film and entertainment industry in the 1950s and early 1960s reveals how pivotal A Hard Day’s Night (1964) was to this era. At this time, after losing ownership of theaters following the Paramount Decree, Hollywood was also adjusting to the ascendance of television, the emergence of the youth market, the increasing popularity of rock music, and the development of the LP record. All of these constituted new markets that the film industry slowly moved to incorporate. A Hard Day’s Night is the most successful work of this era to capitalize doubly on music and a movie. The film, which cost only 0.5 million dollars, went on to earn over $13.5 million. It also effectively set a new standard for cross-promotion: a possibility so unanticipated at the time that “EMI and Capitol, The Beatles’ record distributors, neglected to include soundtrack rights in the original contract negotiated with [the band’s manager, Brian] Epstein.” This situation left United Artists with both the rights to the film and the soundtrack album, modeling a formula that has been imitated since. Before A Hard Day’s Night, soundtracks never matched the profits of the feature film and typically “consisted of an expanded theme song and instrumental fillers.” With a full-length LP that contained numerous successful singles, A Hard Day’s Night initiated a change that became a common practice. The Graduate (1967), Easy Rider (1969), and Superfly (1972) are three examples of successful soundtrack tie-ins that followed A Hard Day’s Night’s model. While the place ofAHard Day’s Night in soundtrack history is well established and researched, its relationship to genre history has not been as widely noted or studied. In this article, I focus on A Hard Day’s Night’s engagement with the musical biopic genre. Unlike the inclusion of rock music in both the film and separately sold soundtrack, which left a lasting influence, A Hard Day’s Night’s work with genre is more exceptional. It did not introduce a model of the musical biopic that was widely