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# 100 Photographs: The Pillow Fight

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/QVNFmPTJ.m3u8" -->
## Video: 100 Photographs: The Pillow Fight

[Watch (HLS stream): 100 Photographs: The Pillow Fight](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/QVNFmPTJ.m3u8) (3:58)

![100 Photographs: The Pillow Fight](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/QVNFmPTJ/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2016-11-11. In his depiction of the Beatles' playful romp at a Paris hotel, Harry Benson distills a magic moment: John, Paul, George and Ringo on the eve of incomparable stardom_


---

Jul 27, 2023 6:52 PM UTC

---

## More From This Series

[All Videos](https://time.com/video/)

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### TIME's 100 Most Influential Photos: Harry Benson

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### 100 Photographs: The Falling Man

[100 Photographs: Dali Atomicus](/video/c7yPeZ12/)

### 100 Photographs: Dali Atomicus

---


## Transcript

[ APPLAUSE ] [ MUSIC ] My name is Harry Benson, I'm a photographer. I was with The Beatles in 1964 in Paris, and they were sensational. First night they have a gig out at the Fountain Blue. As I'm walking in, and Beatles are starting up. [ MUSIC ]. [ LAUGH ] This is the right Story. I'm lucky. We were terrific. You knew this was where I should be. Get as close to these people as you can. It was in the Georg V. Let me tell you what happened. I'm in the Beatles room one night and Brian Eppstein comes in. With cable to say we're number one in America. I wanna hold your hand. And he come's in about half an hour after that to say you're on the Ed Sullivan Show.

After Brian Epstein had left, it was very late at night. Paul is sitting with a glass of whiskey, and John slips away, got behind him with a pillow, hits him, [ SOUND ] and that's how it started. I just kept shooting it, bang, bang, boom, boom, with a roller [ INAUDIBLE ]. [ INAUDIBLE ]. And they we were laughing. You see the laughing all the way through it and I didn't have an assistant or anything. And it was only one flash I had on this. One strobe. It must have been for about 20 minutes. There's something about a good picture that does fit where there is a line And it's moving, and it's all together.

Paul was important for my Beatles photograph, meaning that he held the pillow high, that gave me the drama. And I like movement in a picture, I like it to move. [ MUSIC ] Robert Louis Stevenson said in a poem of his, in each a glimpse and gone forever. Well, that's what I mean by a good photograph. The Beatles will never have a pillow fight again. And I couldn't repeat that picture again. This is happiness, it's movement. This is what it was then. They were happy. They were moving. And I'm moving with them. [ MUSIC ] My room was only just down the hall from the Beatles. [ SOUND ] Dark enough in the toilet.

Developed. Printed. Washed them in the dump. Because. If I hadn't of washed them they could come yellow in a hurry, and then dry the film with hair dryer, and then I put it on a transmitter to London. From a telephone, and **** it, but they got a machine and you put your print on it. The prints not that [ INAUDIBLE ] put it on. It turns around. Beep beep beep. [ SOUND ] And then I went to New York with them on the same plane. But I know I've got a picture of them arriving. And they were a bit worried about arriving, about America. Because It was only two months after Jack Kennedy, assassination.

And I do think the Beatles had a lot to do with bringing a bit of joy to the situation. She loves you, yeah yeah yeah. I mean it was incredible. [ MUSIC ]

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