NYPD log books list ‘thin blue line’ holding back Beatlemania
The police blotter shows the officers tasked with protecting The Beatles on their first US visit for the Ed Sullivan show
New York Police Department log books for the officers given the task of protecting The Beatles from hoards of screaming fans as they conquered America have gone on show.
The little piece of Beatles memorabilia shows the NYPD officers given the job of keeping the world’s hottest property from thousands of their adoring fans for their first visit to the US and their historic performance on the Ed Sullivan show on February 9, 1964.
Detailed as the “visit of Beatles singing group”, the handwritten police blotter lists Sergeants O’Shea, Jones and McAuliffe, with officers Delgado, De Angelo, Lucarelli and Madden among the detachment looking after the four visitors from Liverpool.
“After 50 years they clean out and destroy them, so I looked up February 64 and found the book, which would have been destroyed the following year.”
His father told his son he found the four lads from Liverpool “well dressed and well behaved”, and that they unassumingly thought that “the crowds outside the hotel were for someone else”.
Hoards of screaming youngsters and reporters shadowed the band’s every move, with police on alert for fans posing as hotel guests to get close to them.
Their first live TV performance in the US was watched by a then record 73 million people, with 60% of the TVs in the US tuned to the show.
The police log books are now on display at the Magical Beatles Museum, Liverpool.
