English actress Hayley Mills has joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about being born into a show business family, having a Beatle take her on a date, writing her new memoir and more on “Everything Fab. Four “, a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music specialist who also writes on pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.
The multi-award-winning Mills, whose father is legendary actor Sir John Mills and mother novelist and playwright Mary Hayley Bell, began acting at the age of 12 in the British crime drama “Tiger Bay”. Hailed as a child screen prodigy, Mills starred in six Disney films in six years, including “Pollyanna” and “The Parent Trap,” making her a star in the early 1960s, much like the Beatles.
Mills met the group twice at the London Palladium in 1963 and 1964, where they both performed (the second time Judy Garland was also famous on the bill) and described the four members as “charismatic, special and different. “and their music as” so unique. ” As the Beatlemania swept across Britain, she said they “represented [our generation] very good, “but as she discovered with her own grandsons who are now Beatles fans, that feeling has spread through the generations.
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These boys may be impressed to hear that their grandmother once also went on a date with one of the band members. As Mills tells Womack (and also details in her new memoir, “Forever Young”), she was scheduled to attend a Red Cross charity function at a movie theater in Henley in March 1964 (a month after the Beatles played. played “The Ed Sullivan Show”). Her parents insisted that she have an escort, and since all of her friends were at school, her mother said, “I’ll call George Harrison,” who was Mills’ favorite Beatle and who happily accepted. ‘go.
RELATED: How George Harrison’s Lifetime Quest For Spiritual Enlightenment Shaped His Music And Life
What ensued that night, besides being beset by screaming girls and Beatles fans holding autograph books at the theater, was an event that Mills calls “absolutely surreal” and that for years to come. George Harrison himself would later be remembered as “one of his favorite memories.”
Hear the whole conversation about this special evening and more, including stories of Mills’ wonderful experiences working with Walt Disney as a child, on “Everything Fab Four” and subscribe through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google, or wherever. you get your podcasts.
“Everything Fab Four” is distributed by Salon. Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography of Beatles producer George Martin, the bestselling book “Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles” and “John Lennon, 1980 : The Last Days in the Life. “
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