Eight little-known facts about 'Help!'

Brian Mansfield | USA TODAY

The Beatles second film, Help!, premiered in London 50 years ago Wednesday. Should you be thinking about celebrating the anniversary by watching the film, USA TODAY's Brian Mansfield has several backstories that might help you enjoy it more.

1. The Beatles-James Bond connection

A car-chase scene early in Help! specifically parodies a chase scene in the third James Bond film, Goldfinger, which came out in January 1965, one month before the Fab Four began filming Help! in the Bahamas. In Goldfinger, Sean Connery's Bond tells actress Shirley Eaton's Jill Masterson that drinking an unchilled Dom Perignon '53 is "as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs." By 1965, the Beatles-Bond connection already was a strong one: Not only had Beatles producer George Martin also produced the Matt Monro From Russia With Love and Shirley Bassey Goldfinger theme songs, but the group's debut single, Love Me Do, was released the same day as the first Bond film, Dr. No. — Oct. 5, 1962.

2. Hiding a telegraph line in plain sight

In the montage for the first single from the movie, Ticket to Ride, director Richard Lester didn't care for a shot that had telegraph lines in them. Since the filmmakers couldn't remove them — this was the pre-CGI era, after all — they came up with the idea to superimpose the notes of the song's melody onto them, turning them into the lines of a musical staff.

3. The film title that wasn't

Early pressings of the Ticket to Ride single, which came out in April 1965 while Help! was still being filmed, included a caption that read "From the United Artists Release, 'Eight Arms to Hold You.' That was the film's second working title, the first one being, simply, Beatles 2.

4. Most songs weren't written for the film

Other than the John Lennon-penned title track, all the Beatles songs used in Help! were written before the screenplay was finished. "I was given a demo tape with about 11 songs, and I chose six of them in a rather arbitrary way, thinking that they were ones which I could so something with," director Richard Lester said in Steve Turner's 1994 book The Beatles A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Song. "It was as casual as that, and I fitted the songs into the film in places where I thought I could do something with them."

5. The power-plant prediction

About an hour into Help!, there's an establishing shot of what's called "A Well Known Power Station." It's actually Battersea Power Station on the south bank of London's River Thames. The Beatles wouldn't have known it at the time, but it might very well be the best-known power station in all of rock music, having also been featured on the cover of Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals.

6. Glass, tiger

In the scene where Starr faces a bengal tiger in a cellar, the two were actually one a divided set. The drummer and the giant cat were separated by an inch-thick pane of glass.

7. The Beatles-Peter Sellers connection

An early version of the script that became Help! reportedly was conceived as a starring vehicle for Peter Sellers, a favorite entertainer and friend of The Beatles. After the movie came out, Sellers released a cover version of the title single, which he recited in a voice that bore a marked resemblance to that of Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey.

8. For those keeping score at home

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ken Thorne received a 1965 Grammy nomination for best original score written for a motion picture of television show. They lost to Johnny Mandel, whose score for the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton film The Sandpiper, included The Shadow of Your Smile.