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The success of The Beatles’ first movie, A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, paved the way for their next film, HELP!, which opened a year to the day later.

NIGHT, which hit NYC cinemas Aug. 11, 1964, did $14M worldwide on a budget of $529,000. HELP! arrived in NYC the following Aug. 11 and did $12.1M globally on a budget of $1.5M. Both films were directed by Richard Lester and distributed by United Artists. The Beatles had wanted to work with Lester because they were fans of his 1959 short THE RUNNING JUMPING & STANDING STILL FILM, co-directed with Peter Sellers.

The black & white NIGHT’s first working title was THE BEATLES and then became BEATLEMANIA. It famously was changed when Ringo Starr, exhausted from filming, said he was resting on “a hard day’s night.” John Lennon shared that line with producer Walter Shenson, who pitched it as the new title to UA — which didn’t like it. At Shenson’s suggestion, UA bounced it off some younger staffers and quickly changed its mind. John & Paul McCartney began work on the title song that night, along with George Harrison & Ringo, and they played it the next morning for Shenson.

UA was most excited about a loophole it had found in The Beatles’ U.S. contract with Capitol Records, which showed that it didn’t cover movie scores. UA could, therefore, release a NIGHT soundtrack LP. On that album, the group performed eight songs and there were four instrumental tracks from the score arranged by George Martin. It quickly became a #1 LP. Years later, UA got out of the record business and sold its catalog to Capitol, which then reissued NIGHT’s soundtrack on its own label.

HELP!, which was shot in color, wasn’t supposed to be The Beatles’ second movie. They were going to do a western where they were all pursuing a cattle baron’s daughter, but that project evaporated and, instead, they made HELP! Paul has said HELP!’s screenplay was written to meet their requests to film in resort locations like the Alps and the Bahamas where they’d never been. Since the Bahamas was a British territory, it also served as an attractive tax shelter for the group.

HELP! also wasn’t that film’s first title. When Capitol released “Ticket To Ride,” the movie’s first single, they said it was from EIGHT ARMS TO HOLD YOU, a title The Beatles disliked and which didn’t fit the storyline. HELP! turned out to be the perfect title. Although The Beatles weren’t particularly happy with how Lester directed HELP!, it’s since been hailed as an influence on the making of music videos.

During production, Paul was working on a song he temporarily called “Scrambled Eggs” and drove Lester crazy by playing its melody over & over. By the time filming wrapped, Paul had finally sorted out the lyrics — and “Scrambled Eggs” was now “Yesterday.”