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Norm and Shake are loosely based on The Beatles real-life road managers Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans, respectively.
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The people chasing The Beatles into the train at the beginning of the film are real fans.
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The movie's working title initially was "The Beatles", then "Beatlemania", until Ringo Starr who was exhausted after a long day coined a phrase 'A Hard Day's Night', that was accepted by the studio.
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The song "You Can't Do That" was cut from the concert scene at the end of the film, but the scene in which it is performed is still intact.
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Ringo Starr is invited to "Le Cercle" gambling club, the same club where James Bond makes his first appearance in Dr. No. Coincidentally, both "A Hard Day's Night" and "Dr. No" were originally released by United Artists.
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Another James Bond connection is the song, "This Boy" (a.k.a. "Ringo's Theme"), an instrumental version of which was used in the film to accompany Ringo Starr's solo scene. The guitarist was Vic Flick, who previously played on "The James Bond Theme" from Dr. No.
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A young Phil Collins appeared in the audience during the "You Can't Do That" number though the sequence was cut from the film.
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The Beatles first shared the bill with Wilfrid Brambell at the Royal Command Variety Performance in November 1963.
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When shooting began, The Beatles had not yet joined the British actor's union. They were hastily inducted on the set with Wilfrid Brambell proposing their membership, and Norman Rossington seconding the motion.
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In the scene where Paul McCartney's grandfather suggests Ringo Starr to be parading instead of reading a book, the book he's reading is "Anatomy of a Murder".
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The woolly sweater worn by the TV director (Victor Spinetti) was his own. The sweater was given to him as a gift and later given to a fan club who had asked him for it.
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John Lennon's written answer to the female reporter asking him if he has any hobbies, is the word "tits".
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Pattie Boyd (later George Harrison's first wife) appears in several scenes in the first act, all on the train. 1) She is one of the two "schoolgirls on the train" they first encounter 2) Paul McCartney chats her up with her friend. 3) She sits next to Paul and smiles and sings on "I Should Have Known Better".
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The tire that Ringo Starr trips over in the scene at the river bank had to be thrown again and again, as it kept rolling incorrectly. Finally, after numerous wasted takes, it was offered to young actor David Janson, on hand to play the young boy Ringo meets. Janson rolled the tire correctly on the first try.
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George Harrison stumbles and falls during the opening sequence of the group running down a street towards the camera. This wasn't intended and he ripped the suit he was wearing, but as he quickly recovered, laughed and continued running, it was decided to retain the shot in the film.
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The song accompanying the boys' romp in the field was originally "I'll Cry Instead". It was changed to the previously-released track "Can't Buy Me Love" when director Richard Lester felt the first song didn't fit the mood properly.
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While all four of The Beatles attended the movie's premiere, reportedly none stayed for the whole show.
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Ringo Starr was praised for his solo scene at the riverside as a forlorn soul. However, his expression in that scene was actually the result of being severely hung over after a previous night of heavy drinking.
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Two scenes were filmed but never used. A sequence where The Beatles are stuck in a traffic jam along with their chauffeur (Frank Thornton) and a solo scene where Paul McCartney meets a Shakespearean actress (Isla Blair) rehearsing in her dressing room.
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Mal Evans, one of the Beatles assistants along with Neil Aspinall, makes a cameo in the film. He is the person carrying the upright bass/cello in between John Lennon and Anna Quayle (Millie) as they are talking in the hallway backstage at the television theater.
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Ringo Starr's answering a reporter's question "Are you a mod, or a rocker?" with "I'm a mocker" was voted as the #58 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
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United Artists wanted to produce the film because The Beatles' contract with Capitol Records did not include a provision covering film scores. As a result, the original soundtrack for "A Hard Day's Night" was released on United Artists Records. All of the selections were simultaneously released on Capitol as well, on either the "Something New" album or as 45-rpm singles.
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Writer Alun Owen put together the plot of the movie while following The Beatles around on their tour of France before they went to America. From observing them, he created their "stereotypes": John Lennon is a smart-ass, Paul McCartney is "cute" and sensible, George Harrison is quiet and shy and Ringo Starr is dim-witted and sad. He also picked up their manners of speech, and their daily routines, with which he created the plot. Despite the comic elements, it really was a "day-in-the-life" look at The Beatles.
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The Beatles record producer George Martin got an Academy Award nomination for his music score in the movie, but The Beatles themselves weren't nominated for their music.
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There was a scene filmed, but cut, which featured Paul McCartney flirting and dancing with a ballerina preparing for her performance. It was cut to save time and because Paul already had his own plot line with his "grandfather".
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The constant mention of Paul McCartney's grandfather being "very clean" are references to actor Wilfrid Brambell playing a rag-and-bone man in Steptoe and Son, featuring the catch-phrase, "You dirty old man." "Steptoe and Son" was remade in the US as Sanford and Son.
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Once Ringo Starr's line "A Hard Day's Night" was confirmed as the movie's title, it was put to music by John Lennon and Paul McCartney with participation of George Harrison and Starr). The Beatles collectively composed the song that same night, playing it the next morning to producer Walter Shenson in their dressing room.
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Screenwriter Alun Owen claimed that the word "grotty" was a word used in Liverpool to mean "grotesque", but The Beatles never heard it before and believed Owen made it up. It subsequently passed into general usage and linguists certainly cite The Beatles as the popularizers of the word in the early 1960s and trace its origins to Liverpool.
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Besides Grandfather's gambling at "Le Cercle Club," there is other James Bond connections: Richard Vernon (the grumpy old man on the train) plays Smithers - the man who lectures Bond on gold in Goldfinger, and Margaret Nolan (girl at "Le Cercle Club") also appeared in that film, as "Dink", the girl at the hotel swimming pool.
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In the scene where The Beatles are running and playing in the field, John Lennon was not there. He was away promoting his new book "John Lennon: In His Own Write." A body double filled in for John, and close-up shots of him were edited into the scene later. A copy of the book can be seen on a mantelpiece in the background of a shot of Norm, Shake and Paul's (very clean) grandfather.
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Screenwriter Alun Owen claims that the only Beatle who ad-libbed was John Lennon. The truth is that all four members of The Beatles sparked each other's imagination and improvised.
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While Paul McCartney is singing "And I Love Her," the camera panning around him picks up an arc light that flashes straight into the lens. United Artists executives, reviewing the dailies and certain the shot had to be a mistake, asked producer Walter Shenson if he was aware of it; Shenson replied it had taken them all morning to get it like that.
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The camera's 360-degree pan around Paul McCartney during his performance of "And I Love Her" was achieved by dangling the camera from strings marionette-style and moving it in a circle around McCartney.
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This was The Beatles' first feature film and happens to be their only feature filmed in black & white.
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The first movie ever put out on DVD, it was issued as a single disc. It was later reissued as a two-disc DVD.
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Paul McCartney's comment to the mirror in the dressing room "That this too too solid flesh would melt" is from William Shakespeare's "Hamlet", Act 1 Scene 2.
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Paul McCartney's grandfather tells a policeman that he is "a soldier of the Republic". This is a reference to the IRA and shows the links to the Irish immigration to Liverpool. He quotes from the song, "A Nation Once Again" written in the 1840s by Thomas Osborne Davis (1814-1845), a founder of an Irish movement whose aim was the independence of Ireland.
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The resulting album of the same name is the only one The Beatles released with every song written and composed exclusively by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
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With a final cost of about $500,000 and a box office take of about $8,000,000 in the first week, the movie is amongst the most profitable (percentage-wise) of all time.
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Since The Beatles are credited in the opening set of credits, but are not in the more comprehensive end credits, they are listed first, followed by those in the end credits, as required by IMDb policy on cast ordering.
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United Artists was pressuring the producers to finally come up with a title for the film. When John Lennon told producer Walter Shenson about Ringo Starr's malapropisms, Shenson thought that Ringo's phrase "a hard day's night"--referring to his resting up after an exhausting day--might make a good title. John agreed. Shenson called United Artists with the proposed title, which was coolly received. Shenson suggested that they ask the secretaries and other young employees, who might be fans of The Beatles, what they thought of the proposed title. The suggestion worked and the title was accepted.
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According to Norman Rossington, in the scene where John Lennon takes the scissors and cuts the tailor's tape and says "I now declare this bridge open", John improvised other versions where instead of "bridge" he would say "synagogue", "fish-and-chips stand", etc. The tailor in the scene is actually The Beatles' real tailor.
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It was reported in contemporary press cuttings that 15 minutes was later cut from the film, including scenes involving a London double-decker bus. The Beatles autographed the ceiling of this bus, which was by that time privately owned by Tim Lewis of Twickenham. Many years later, in 1987, David Thrower purchased the bus in a derelict state, from Wicksteed Park, Kettering, and it is now fully restored to the condition it was in when used in the film - though the signatures of the Beatles on the ceiling are long gone, unfortunately.
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