June 1, 1967, 55 years and four days ago, was the official date chosen by the Beatles for release in the United Kingdom. eighth LP, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Although in some parts of the country the launch has been postponed to May 26). From the moment it left the factory, the album became a totemic part of 20th-century popular culture, greatly contributing to its iconic cover, in which all four members of the band appear dressed in colorful uniforms. a diverse and colorful gallery of characters and objects. Of the 61 real people in the picture, only five are alive today. Five? In reality, there is a sixth survivor that remains hidden. And his is not just any name.
this is the story
Even today, 55 years after Sergeant Pepper was released, many people are surprised to discover that the famous image that covered the cover was a photograph, not a collage. It was taken by photographer Michael Cooper at the Chelsea Manor studios in London on March 30, 1967. And all the faces of the more or less famous characters, with the four Beatles posing dressed as members of a military band, were really there, superimposed on life-size cardboard cutouts. Mad. “I was making a work of art in my head, not a record cover,” said artist Peter Blake, one of the authors of the album’s graphic design, years later.
Paul’s drawings
Sergeant Pepper’s cover was designed based on an idea by Paul McCartney. Deciding that the overall concept of the album would revolve around Sergeant Pepper’s fictional Lonely Hearts Band, Macca drew a series of sketches of the Beatles appearing in an Edwardian pose, dressed in colorful military uniforms and holding musical instruments. photos of various officials, idols and friends of the group were posted.
The project took a huge leap forward when gallery owner and art dealer Robert Fraser suggested that the musicians hire Peter Blake, one of British pop-art’s most powerful figures, and his American wife, Jann Haworth. They were the ones who suggested that the procession of figures that the Beatles were supposed to protect was a real staging, not a simple two-dimensional collage. The proposal was enthusiastically received, and everyone involved started making lists of characters they wanted to include. Well, everyone except Ringo Starr, who simply says, “What the others say is OK with me.”
There are different versions about who chose each of the guests, so it is almost impossible to make a comprehensive calculation. We know that John Lennon wanted to include his youth friend Stuart Sutcliffe, who briefly passed on the Beatles and died tragically young in 1962; writers Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde, and Liverpool football player Albert Stubbins. John also loved Jesus Christ, who was denied existence so as not to start a fire, and Adolf Hitler, who at the last moment became a wisely excluded figure.
Those selected by McCartney included avant-garde composer Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, dancer and singer Fred Astaire, and writers William S. Burroughs and Aldous Huxley. George Harrison’s list includes Bob Dylan, comedian Lenny Bruce, psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, and Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi (don’t call him; EMI president Joseph Lockwood decided to cut it off when the cover was over. A handful of Hindu gurus Robert Fraser, writer Terry Southern, and contemporary He suggested the names of artists Wally Berman and Richard Lindner (possibly Larry Bell too), while Peter Blake and Jann Haworth chose figures from Johnny Weissmuller, Tony Curtis, WC Fields, comedian Max Miller and show business singer Dion DiMucci.
Sgt. Of the 61 people who appeared on Pepper’s cover, 28 (including the Beatles themselves) were alive at the time of the album’s release, so to avoid problems, EMI asked all of them to explicitly allow your image to be used. Shirley Temple demanded an autographed cover for her children by the band in return, and Mae West resisted the reveal on the grounds that she would never be a member of a lonely heart club (eventually, she gave her consent). The only real problem was New York actor Leo Gorcey, who refused to give permission unless he was paid $400 and was eventually airbrushed (Gorcey died two years later, on the exact day of his birthday). Sergeant Pepper’s appearance in the USA).
Since then, 23 of the characters represented have died, and only five can see themselves on the popular cover: The Beatles Paul McCartney (1942) and Ringo Starr (1940), as well as musicians Bob Dylan (1941) and Dion DiMucci. (1939) and sculptor Larry Bell (1939). But there is someone else.
Due to the arrangement of the figures at the time the photo was taken, some characters were partially or almost completely hidden in the final image. This is the case with writers James Joyce and Stephen Crane, actress Bette Davis, and physicist Albert Einstein. Of all, there is at least some visible gap in the cover. There were three people with even worse fortunes, and all three were acting: Timothy Carey, Marcello Mastroianni, and Sophia Loren. Thanks to some photos taken during the session (the making of it, of course), we know that the three of them are there in cardboard cutouts, but none of the three appear in Sergeant Pepper’s. No signal.
The image of Timothy Carey taken from Stanley Kubrick’s The Perfect Heist was completely blacked out by George Harrison. And Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, taken from an enlarged framework of the Italian Marriage Style, were finally condemned to invisibility when Blake and Haworth placed before them wax figures of the four Beatles on their matted days, loaned to Madame Tussaud’s London museum. .
We don’t see them, but they are. And so, 87-year-old Sophia Loren is the sixth person to survive on the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Group.