Beatle Buddies | Beatles memorabilia

‘Oil’ paintings were made for the Beatle Buddies Fan Club and had a very colorful story. The portraits measured 14" x 17" and featured a painting of the band by artist Leo Jansen, printed on a canvas-like board. Additional portraits were produced in 16” x 20” and 9" x 12” sizes. The item was packaged in a plastic bag with membership and header cards.

John and Paul’s portraits were based on photographs taken around May 1963 by Peter Hall.

The countertop retail display came with a 10”x14”x7” base, along with a 14”x18” top piece that featured a picture of Pat Boone advertising “Beatle Buddies” and the promotion he was managing as a merchandising partner for the items.

“[I saw the] poster of the Beatles. It was wrapped in cellophane with an attached application to join the ‘Beatle Buddies’ Club.’ The clerk explained to us that by buying a poster and joining the club, you were entered into a contest that might win you a trip to Hollywood and to see the Beatles in person,” Chris Barnes explains, having seen the contest information in 1964 via his online blog (Beatlesbuddycontest.blogspot.com).

The contest required submission of the appropriate form, and winners would be randomly chosen for a trip to The Beatles’ Las Vegas concert on August 20, 1964. Barnes, then in eighth grade, was one of those winners. Chris and his family received a phone call from Boone’s representative on a Sunday night. 

“Congratulations...you are a winner in the “Beatle Buddies’ Club” contest,” Chris remembered the conversation. “...you have won a trip for two to Hollywood, California, and tickets to see The Beatles in Las Vegas. My mind swirled with this amazing news and trying to make sense of it all.”

So why did the Fifties and Sixties performer/singer/show-business celebrity Pat Boone get involved with a Beatles promotion, oil paintings, and a show?

“So, where I’d been relying on a lot of record royalty every year, they were suddenly taking it all. They were sweeping the table. I got a painter, and I was always proud of this; I had a painter do portraits of The Beatles, took just publicity pictures and did oil portraits, and we had prints made. I got a license from Seltaeb, which is Beatles spelled backward, from Epstein, their manager, and we sold Beatle pictures.” 

Chris Barnes and his mother traveled to Vegas with the other winners. “We were surprised to be met by Pat Boone as he greeted each person individually in the shade of the airplane wing. There we were photographed and given a special souvenir, a Beatles pen with faces of the Fab Four in silver down the pen clip.” 

“When I met The Beatles on their first tour of the States, we ran a contest,” Boone remembered. “Of course, I had a partner who was a good merchandiser. I thought of it, but he implemented it all. So, we had a contest running nationally. With every set of Beatle pictures that we sold, and they were really nice, suitable for framing, there was a tag, and you kept your part of the tag and mailed the other tag in, and there was a drawing. We brought 30 people from all over the country to their concert in Las Vegas. They did two shows, afternoon and evening. So, my wife, family, and I were all there for the first show. Then we went back between shows and visited with The Beatles in the Thomas Mark Arena; I think it was.” 

Chris Barnes says, “We were bused to the Las Vegas Convention Center for the Beatles concert. We were shown our seats in the center and about 20 rows back. We noticed celebrities milling around as we entered, including Liberace. The warm-up acts were... Jackie DeShannon and The Righteous Brothers are not too shabby. Finally, in came “The Beatles” to a deafening roar. Everybody stood and then climbed onto their seats. The screaming was a total “wall of sound” that effectively kept almost everybody from hearing the singing, but one could make out the song by the instruments if you were lucky.”

“We went and played in Las Vegas, where Liberace visited us. I think the first four rows of that concert were filled up by Pat Boone and his daughters. He seemed to have hundreds of daughters,” George Harrison recalled in the Anthology project.

The Beatles performed two shows in Las Vegas that night, the first at 4 p.m. and the second at 9 p.m. A crowd of 17,000 fans attended the two sold-out shows at ticket costs of $2, $3, $4, and $5. A bomb threat was received by telephone in between the shows. Still, after some detective work, the police department decided to continue with the second show, fearing violence by disappointed fans if they canceled.

“[After the show, The Beatles] said to me, “Brian Epstein, our manager, has put our name on a lot of stuff. A lot of it is just junk, but we like these pictures. These are very nice, flattering pictures.” Years later, I was in England, and I went to The Cavern in Liverpool. Of course, it’s like a museum to The Beatles now. But sure enough, right in front were these framed portraits of The Beatles that I had commissioned and had done. They have them prominently displayed there at The Cavern,” Boone said. An October 29, 1964, article in the Progress-Index newspaper out of Petersburg, Virginia, reported that by that date, Boone had “sold 10 million” of the portraits.

An exciting event where The Beatles, Pat Boone, a young fan named Chris Barnes, and memorabilia all crossed paths.

“I had plenty of other memories to last a lifetime,” Barnes summarized. “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!”

Boone-Lyon Enterprises

The Seltaeb agreement was with Boone-Lyon Enterprises, 9033 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, California, with the manufacturing license for ‘color reproduction in oil.’

Boone-Lyon Enterprises was named in a NEMS Enterprises, Ltd vs. Seltaeb, Incorporated lawsuit filed in the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, First Judicial Department, dated: New York, New York, July 6, 1965.

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