"SOMETHING" ABOUT HARRISON
Friday, November 30 2001
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George Harrison, who succumbed to cancer in Los Angeles Thursday at the age of 58, became a principal force behind the revival of the British film industry in the 1980s. In 1978, he and his former manager, Denis O'Brien, launched HandMade Films, and immediately registered success with their first feature, Monty Python's The Life of Brian, released in 1979. The company went on to produce 23 films during the following decade, including The Long Good Friday, Time Bandits, Mona Lisa and Nuns on the Run. However, Handmade came undone in 1990 when the two partners had a falling out, with Harrison eventually winning $11 million in a lawsuit against O'Brien. Harrison was the first to acknowledge that motion pictures had had a significant impact on the Beatles. In a 1978 radio interview, he revealed that in the group's early days, Lennon, who was an avid Marlon Brando fan, persuaded the group to wear leather outfits on stage like those worn by Brando's motorcycle gang in 1954's The Wild One. It wasn't until years later, he said, that he actually saw the movie and was taken aback when, in one scene, Lee Marvin wheels into town with Brando's old gang, confronts Brando, and remarks, "Where ya been, Johnnie? We been missing you. All the Beetles been missing you." "I nearly fell out of my chair when I heard that," Harrison remarked.
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