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1674-4 The Beatles FRI FEB 03 1984 ED: WEEKENDER SECTION: PAGE 1 PAGE: lA LENGTH: 2814 LONG ILLUST: BEATLE COLLAGES SPREAD OVER FOUR PAGES (Trainor, Eli Silverberg, file photos) SOURCE: IAN GLASS Miami News Reporter DATELINE: MEMO: THE BEATLES IN MIAMI : SEE SIDEBARS 20 YEARS AGO, MOP-TOPS WANTED TO HOLD OUR HANDS WE WEREN'T QUITE sure what would happen when those four mop- topped youngsters -- then taking their first wobbly, but confident steps on the road to musical immortality -- landed in Miami 20 years ago, but everybody felt happy inside, all right. For weeks, Miami' s two rock 'n' roll stations, WFUN and WQAM, had been whipping teenagers into a Beatles frenzy, each trying to outdo the other in the number of times "She Loves You, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Please, Please Me" could be repeated in the course of a hard day' s programming. A Beatles fan club already had attracted several hundred members. And the owner of the Peppermint Lounge on the 79th Street Causeway -- where one escaped to indulge in frantic dances like The Twist, The Monkey, The Fly and The Dog -- announced he would switch over almost exclusively to cater to Beatlemania. So there was no one, but no one, who didn't know exactly when the Fab Four would arrive in Miami Beach to tape a segment for the popular Ed Sullivan TV show. But we knew little then about John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison except that they were products of the gloomy, dismal English port of Liverpool, the best of the beat bands that had sprung out of that unlikely environment; that they had suddenly taken England by storm, and that they were mobbed wherever they performed. Their freshness had invigorated a jaded Britain; even the sophisticated fell under their spell. And now the fever had spread across the Atlantic. They landed in New York on Feb. 7 , 1964 , to the same boisterous reception and -- the evening before they were due to fly to Miami -- they gave an enormously successful and noisy performance very much out of character for the normally staid Carnegie Hall. * * * ALL OF THIS FRENZIED adulation had not escaped the attention of Miami Beach Police Chief Rocky Pomerance, for these four kids -- an inescapable term because, though they were out of their teens, they were so bloody clean-cut, so huggable, so childlike in their mien -- had been tossed in his lap. They would be staying at the Deauville Hotel on Collins Avenue, where the show would be taped. Around 20 police officers would be deployed fulltime to protect the Beatles from their hyperactive fans, and in charge disparate personalities as John F. Kennedy, the Beach Boys and Elvis Presley. "I assigned Buddy specifically because he was resourceful and able to handle situations like this with ingenious techniques, " Pomerance recalled recently -- and he was right. Dresner conducted the week-long*Save-the- Beatles* operation with the cunning and skill of a master tactician, though well aware that he was less than popular with the American and British reporters who were trying frantically to record the caper for an insatiable public. Indeed, it was to be 20 years later that Dresner, now 57 and retired from the police force, was to sit down and talk about the intimate friendship he developed with the Beatles ( "they were a delight and it was an experience I ' ll remember forever" ) , how he showed them their first drive-in movie, took them home for their first American home-cooked meal and how he kept them out of reach of the perfervid press and their own avid followers. "My orders to Buddy were to handle the assignment with humor, " said Pomerance, now president of Gibraltar Central Security Corp. , which handles alarm systems . "I 'd called a colleague in the New York Police Department and asked him about the reaction there. He said it was a mob scene, but that it wasn' t the Beatles ' fault. Such was their charismatic appeal. " And so, in the late afternoon of Feb. 13, 1964 , a National Airlines DC-8 landed at Miami International Airport and disgorged the Beatles to the untender mercies of 4, 000 screaming fans. It was to be a smashing welcome in all sense of the word -- smashed doors, smashed windows, a smashed car roof. Youngsters scuffled for position, and several were injured. A furious Port Director Alan Stewart estimated the crazed crowd caused more than $2,000 damage to airport property before the Beatles could be whisked away to Miami Beach and into the care of Buddy Dresner. * * * DRESNER WAS ASLEEP in his North Miami Beach home early that morning when he was awakened by a policeman knocking at the front door -- Chief Pomerance was trying to track him down. "When I called in, " Dresner recalled, "I was told, 'Be at the Deauville Hotel. You' re going to be in charge of the Beatles. ' I ran to the barber and said, 'Give me a haircut, I 'm taking care of the Beatles. ' "When they arrived at the airport, I got them to the hotel and safely into their rooms. Brian Somerville (their road manager) said to me, 'They' ll do what you say. ' I said, 'Well, for the sake of their safety, they' ll have to cooperate, otherwise we can' t guarantee maximum security. ' But they were terrific. No drugs. No girls in the room. " Their only lapse in taste was their indulgence in an occasional Scotch and warm Coke, the memory of which still makes him grimace. Dresner and the Beatles soon developed a warm relationship. The day after their arrival was Feb. 14 , Valentine' s Day, and the Miami Beach cop realized that in all the excitement he'd forgotten to get a present for his wife, Dorothy. He told George Harrison, "I 've got a problem, " and explained it. Then he picked up the phone and called Dorothy. Harrison and Paul McCartney got on an extension, begged Dresner ' s wife, "Hey, don't be mad at him" -- then they called downstairs and ordered flowers sent to her. At 11 o'clock that night -- because "they like to take into the night at a late hour, " said a friend of the four -- it was heigh-ho and off to the Peppermint Lounge, hotly pursued by the press in scenes reminiscent of a Keystone Kops comedy. There, the four, and Cynthia, Lennon' s first wife, sat at a table by themselves in the dark and observed the dancers ' gyrations -- watched over by the ubiquitous Buddy Dresner -- had a few drinks, signed a few autographs, but made no moves toward the dance floor. After an hour or so, they slipped out and turned up at the Wreck Bar of the Castaways Hotel for a short time. Outside, Ringo and Paul clowned around, grabbing photographers ' cameras and taking pictures of the reporters like myself taking notes of the Beatles taking pictures. Next day, as a sop to the newsmen, road manager Somerville did stage a short press conference at the Deauville. On sudden, unexpected, excitable occasions like this, reporters in their anxiety are sometimes wont to ask asinine questions. And the Liverpudlians were as insouciant as all getout. QUESTION: Ringo, why do you wear all those rings on your fingers? RINGO: They'd look funny through my nose, wouldn' t they? QUESTION: Why do your speaking voices sound different from your singing voices? GEORGE: We don't have the musical background now. QUESTION: Where did you get your hair style? PAUL: From Napoleon. And Julius Ceasar. QUESTION: How can you relax with all these security people about? JOHN: Maybe we' ll find some swimming policemen. And so they did. Dresner was to whisk them off to a private home on Star Island, where they cavorted happily in the pool. All, that is, except Ringo, who was very cautious, seemed afraid of the water and stayed mostly in the shallow end. They also fished off the dock, but, says Dresner, "I don't think they'd ever fished before. I had to teach them. I also had to bait their hooks and take the fish off because they didn' t want to. They caught a few grunts. " Which, 20 years later, brought up another question. How, we knuckle- gnawing newsmen always wanted to know, did Dresner manage to whisk them in and out of the hotel to various destinations undetected. "I used a Hertz truck and 1)/out Ace parcel delivery van. " They would pull up at the rear entrance, because there was no way the Beatles could escape detection by ambling through the lobby. "People were always trying to get to them, you know. We had a barrier in the hotel corridor near their rooms. One day a couple of girls in uniform and carrying sheets over their arms walked up. They didn't look like maids, but they said they'd come to make up the beds. I asked them, 'Since when did the maids here wear green uniforms? ' And I got Cynthia a black, Cleopatra-like wig and white glasses so she could get in and out of the hotel to look at the shops . Cynthia was a very sweet, shy girl. She was very homesick for England. She and John had just had a baby. Mostly they would have dinner in their room by themselves . " * * THE BEATLES SUFFERED what all Britons transplanted to the New World are subject to initially -- diet shock. These were people used to mundane meals like meat and potatoes, fish and chips and apple tart and custard. ( In 1980, when the tourist 'Brits ' invaded Miami Beach on Sir Freddie Laker' s air-hotel packages, surprised hotel chefs found themselves serving breakfasts of baked beans on toast. ) "They ate strange, " said Dresner. "Strange to us at least. Paul and George would sit down and order dessert. I 'd say, 'You can't do that. First comes the salad, then the main course, then the dessert. On the day of the taping of the TV show, we ordered something sent to the hotel room. They wanted fish. What they got was gefilte fish. They didn't know what it was and they weren't very crazy about it. I 'm Jewish, and I explained it to them. I was eating a grilled cheese sandwich, and they looked at it, and suddenly that ' s what they wanted. "It was getting close to show time, and the phone started ringing in the room. The people downstairs wanted them down there. No way, they said, until we get our grilled cheese sandwiches . " The four sat there until room service arrived. Then they ate their sandwiches, and rushed downstairs. "They must have got on that stage about 30 seconds before the show started. " After taping the Ed Sullivan show, Dresner asked them if they'd like a home-cooked meal. "They said yes. I called my wife and told her. 'How many are there going to be? ' she asked. I said, 'Oh, about 21 . ' The others were the people traveling with the Beatles. She wasn't fazed. She served roast beef and baked potato and strawberry shortcake. It was a dynamite meal. " The Dresners ' three children ate with them, and one wonders if son Barry, who was then 5, has ever told his friends about the night Paul McCartney mashed his potato while Ringo Starr cut up his roast beef for him. * * * ON MONDAY, THE DAY after the taping, Buddy Dresner, assuming his den father duties were over, asked Brian Somerville when his charges were leaving. "Brian told me, 'They don' t want to leave. They love it here. ' I called Rocky and asked him what to do. ' Stay with them, ' he told me. And so they stayed for the rest of the week. " By this time, between the long hours and the machinations involved in protecting the Beatles, Dresner was showing the strain. "The hours were tough. I finished when I was sure they were secure in bed and didn't need anything, and then I went home around 3 a.m. I 'd get three hours sleep or so, then go back to the hotel . "Paul and Ringo were sharing a room and John and Cynthia had another room, and George was on his own. I asked George if he minded if I moved in with him and he said no. George was a hell of a guy. He liked sports cars. Someone loaned him an MG, and we sneaked out and drove up to Fort Lauderdale and all over. " One person did, however, manage to break the security barrier and, at least temporarily, sit in on one of the Beatles ' private excursions. Miami News photographer Charles Trainor heard that the quartet were to be the guests of wealthy furniture maker Bernardo Castro for an afternoon of sailing aboard his 96-foot yacht Southern Trail. A friend of Trainor called Castro and got permission for Trainor to go aboard. "Everything went well for a while, " Trainor recalled. "I was making myself a sandwich in the galley when Paul McCartney came down and also started to make a sandwich. I began making pictures of him. Then George Harrison came down and wanted to know who I was. I said I was a guest of the owner. He started getting obnoxious about the whole thing, so they talked the skipper into turning around and going back. " But before he was thrown off, Trainor asked the skipper what route he was going to take. When he found out, Trainor zoomed north and was standing with camera at the ready on the 79th Street Causeway bridge when the Southern Trail -- with the Beatles lounging on deck -- passed underneath. Occasionally, in the interests of publicity, the Beatles would surface for silly stunts -- like splashing in the surf around 83rd Street for the British photographers, who had picked the place because in those days it was fairly isolated; and turning up at the Fifth Street Gym, where boxer Cassius Clay, as Muhummad Ali was then known, was training for his world heavyweight championship bout with Sonny Liston. They clowned with the biggest boxing clown of them all, obligingly sparred with him and lay on their backs for phony knock-out pictures . * * * HOW DOES DRESNER remember his famous charges now? "John was very quiet and serious. Paul was always fun, and the perfect gentleman. " (Indeed, it appears they were all gentlemen. Rocky Pomerance recalls going to see them one day with his wife, "and they all jumped up, because a lady had walked into the room. " ) "Ringo wasn' t quiet, but he was very reserved. George and Paul carried on all the time. " Dresner remembers the time they all spent in the hotel room watching TV. "They loved American TV, especially a program called "Outer Limits. " One of the characters in it had a space gun that could make people disappear. I said, 'You know, if I had one of these, I could go ZAP. and all the criminals would disappear. ' That word ZAP got them hysterical. They wanted to know what it meant. I explained, and I understand they used the word in one of their later songs. " He took the Beatles one night to one of the shows at the Deauville. On the bill were Myron Cohen and Don Rickles. "I had to explain Rickles ' brand of insulting humor so that they wouldn't take offense. So Rickles took me up on the stage and gave me a real working over, and at one point, he said, 'Go get a job, cop. ' From then on, when we ribbed one another, the kids would say, 'Go get a job, cop. ' One day, I said to them, 'Look, save your money while you can because you can't sing and you're not going to last more than a few days. ' And they said, 'Go get a job, cop. ' " * * * JUST BEFORE THE quartet left Miami Beach to continue their legendary career, someone gave Dresner a sketch done in ink. It showed four palm trees, but one could look closely at it and almost see a surrealistic impression of the Beatles. The four signed it over to Dresner with affectionate phrases like "To our Buddy" and "Get a job. " It is his one great memento of the experience. Though the Beatles took pictures of him all the time, he took none of them. "I figured they got hounded enough. " Buddy Dresner hasn't seem them since that week 20 years ago, but he says, wistfully, "They trusted me and I trusted them. We had a great rapport. That was a long time ago. " In retrospect, it was a glorious time for all of us. Yesterday, All my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as if they' re here to stay, Oh, I believe in yesterday. --"Yesterday, " copyright 1965 Northern Songs Ltd. ADDED TERMS: beatle beetles mi and celebrity anecdote END OF DOCUMENT.