Beatles 50th Sullivan Anniversary Count Down…4 Days

Notice the lady in the glasses behind George Harrison…that is Barbara Forster. At the time, she was Barbra Smith, secretary to Ed’s son in law, and producer Bob Precht. Here’s an interesting story she told me Sunday. Only two production secretaries traveled to Miami for the second Beatles appearance and the work was non stop…she was lucky to get four hours of sleep, but maybe the second part of this story makes up for that. When musical artist appeared on the show, they always had to supply a lead sheet of music with lyrics to aid the director in taking shots at the right time. The Beatles did not have any so, as Barbra took notes in short hand, Paul sang/talked the lyrics of all seven songs to her and sometimes John sang along. They were in living room of the band’s suite where John, George and Ringo and they were calling room service for more “tellys” to be brought up for each bedroom. The camera in the photo is an RCA TK30 owned by long time CBS affiliate WTVJ (my old alma mater). The CBS logo is on a large sheet covering the local call letters. Notice that where the focus knob should be, there is a camera 4 placard which is covering the hole. Why? Because WTVJ’s first cameras were Dumont 124B models with the focus control built into the right pan handle. When they got the TK30s, the cameramen had liked the old way so much that they bought an RCA TK41 pan handle for each camera which attached to the bottom, right of the TK30 camera body.

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