Be My Guest 1965 Original British Movie Poster Jerry Lee Lewis Nashville Teens

Description

This is exactly the kind of mid-’60s music artifact that manages to pull several collecting worlds together at once. Be My Guest was a 1965 British musical directed by Lance Comfort, starring a very young David Hemmings and Steve Marriott, just before Hemmings’ breakthrough in Blow-Up and Marriott’s emergence with the Small Faces. The movie is essentially an excuse to parade a succession of contemporary beat groups across the screen, with Jerry Lee Lewis, The Nashville Teens, The Zephyrs, Kenny and the Wranglers, and The Niteshades all appearing. Jerry Lee Lewis performs “No One But Me,” while The Nashville Teens perform “Watcha Gonna Do.”

And then there’s the poster itself: huge, loud, crude, colorful, and completely of its moment. The Nashville Teens dominate the artwork in matching red shirts, surrounded by yellow starbursts and wonderfully loose hand-drawn lettering. There’s almost nothing slick about it, which is precisely the appeal. This is British beat culture before anyone decided it belonged in a museum—part movie poster, part concert bill, part teenage bedroom wall. Be My Guest was also the follow-up to Live It Up! and captures Hemmings and Marriott at a particularly interesting moment just before both became considerably more famous.

A big, wonderfully graphic survivor from the first British Invasion—equally at home in a rock-and-roll collection, a Jerry Lee Lewis collection, a man cave or record room or simply framed on a very large wall.