LET IT SKI!

BEATLEMANIA has returned to the mountains of Austria with a festival celebrating the 60th anniversary of Help! being filmed there. The Fab Four shot some of the most memorable scenes of their second movie in Obertauern, with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr mucking around on the slopes of the ski resort in black capes and hats.

- By James Rampton

To celebrate those indelible memories, Obertauern is holding a "Home of The Beatles" festival from now until May 1.

And even after 60 years its residents are eager to share their stories of an astonishing two-week period in March 1965 when their tiny village was the epicentre of the showbusiness world.

Gloria "Gigi" Mackh, whose father owned the Marietta Hotel (now Places by Valamar), the film crew’s base, recalls: "The movie's director Richard Lester had seen my mother’s grand piano in our hotel, on which she always played for the guests, and said, ‘We need it on the mountain’.

“My father didn’t want to give it away, as the instrument was made of wood and that warps in the snow.

“But Lester said, ‘We'll fly it up in a helicopter and bring it back undamaged’. Of course, we got the piano back completely broken. Four of The Beatles had been standing on my mother’s grand piano and the instrument had sunk knee-deep into the snow!”