Hard Days

London
Aug. 14, 1964
A Hard Day's Night, starring John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — the Beatles — is one of the smoothest, freshest, funniest films ever made solely for purposes of exploitation. Scorning plot,

it affects to study an ordinary day or so in the wholly extraordinary lives of its heroes. They are the clear-eyed innocents, imprisoned by fame … but never for a moment blinded to the really flagrant foolishness of the adult world around them.

Saigon, South Vietnam
June 21, 1963
The automobile at the head of the procession of saffron-robed Buddhist monks [protesting their oppression] in Saigon suddenly choked to a stop at an intersection. The occupants of the car lifted its hood as chanting priests began forming a circle seven or eight deep around the vehicle. Prayer beads in his hand, a phlegmatic, 73-year-old monk named Thich Quang Duc sat down cross-legged in the center of the circle. From under the auto's hood, a monk took a canister of gasoline and poured it over the old priest. An expression of serenity on his wizened face, Quang Duc suddenly struck a match. As flames engulfed his body, he made not a single cry nor moved a muscle. "Oh my God," cried a Western observer, "oh my God." In a will written "before closing my eyes to Buddha," Quang Duc said: "I have the honor of presenting my words to President Diem, asking him to be kind and tolerant toward his people and to enforce a policy of religious equality."

Budapest, Hungary
Nov. 5, 1956
It began like a carnival day. Thousands of people thronged Budapest's old cobblestoned streets wearing red, white and green boutonnieres, tossing red, white and green ribbons into passing cars. Then gradually the crowd began to march. A scared communist official told an American businessman: "The earth is moving." The earth moved to the tread of a million feet in Hungary last week, and a satellite which had been blindly spinning in the Soviet orbit for 11 years suddenly swung out of its gravitational course. It had never happened before. As the world looked on, incredulous, a people armed principally with courage and determination (and a few filched guns) fought one of the most spectacular revolutions of modern times. Behind barricades, from rooftops and apartment windows, they harried their powerful oppressors in the classic revolutionary manner, and at week's end they had wrung from the most ruthless of modern despotisms a promise of the right to be free.

Havana, Cuba
Dec. 9, 1957
Actually, the top leadership of the running rebellion is so prosperous, conservative and respectable that amused Habaneros are calling it "the best-dressed revolution in history." Of the chief rebel plotters outside the Sierra [Maestra, the rebels' mountain base], four are lawyers, three are physicians, two are financiers, one a mill owner. Deftly combining rebellion with business-as-usual, [an error occurred while processing this directive]each earns more than $20,000 a year. The rebels conspire behind brocade curtains in air-conditioned homes and offices. Wrote Time's Reporter Sam Halper after sitting in on one such meeting last week: "Silent servants opened the doors, poured the drinks and arranged the foam-cushioned armchairs in a neat plotters' circle. The only proletarians were the help." The conservatives at the top fear that the longer they stay behind their desks while Castro is in the hills getting headlines, the smaller their influence on him will be. Recently he summoned five of the Havana brains to the hills for a conference, and they had to turn him down — they were too flabby for the trip. They have to worry whether Castro has really discarded the socialistic beliefs that he held earlier, including drastic land reforms and nationalization of U.S.-owned power companies. Castro persists in the cane-burning campaign — a pointless waste of the country's wealth that may well anger many Cubans. Up in the hills, notes one conservative rebel with a mixture of admiration and fear, "he acts like a King before the Magna Carta, sitting under a tree and dispensing justice."

Filton, England
March 13, 1964
The announcement that the U.S. already has a [military] plane flying at three times the speed of sound sent shock waves across Britain and France, which had been confident of winning air supremacy with their Concorde supersonic transport. The plane has been plagued by stormy arguments between its builders, British Aircraft Corp. and France's Sud-Aviation. The partners have been forced to plan major structural changes and to push back delivery.

London
Aug. 26, 1957
When, Althea [Gibson] left for Wimbledon in May, only three close friends were at the airport to wish her luck. When she returned [as the first black player to win Wimbledon], Idlewild was awash with people. Countless acquaintances suddenly remembered how they had helped her, and crowded close to share her success. The city, which had offered Althea's parents a cramped flat in which to raise their children, honored her with a ticker-tape parade. And people breathlessly wanted to know how it felt to shake hands with Queen Elizabeth at Wimbledon and what they had said (The Queen: "It was a very enjoyable match, but you must have been very hot on the court." Althea: "I hope it wasn't as hot in the royal box.") During a lunch given her by New York City's Mayor [Robert] Wagner at the Waldorf, Althea managed to make a speech. "God grant that I wear this crown I have won with dignity," she said. "I just can't describe the joy in my heart."