Inside the Yellow Submarine: The Making of the Beatles' Animated Classic (Paperback)

by Robert R. Hieronimus (Author), Laura Cortner (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"This is real must for all collectors of Beatles momorabelia..." -- Model and Collectors Mart, July 2002. "The author's perseverence must be congratulated... The result is amazing, the detail astonishes, the anecdotes are enthralling..." -- Film Review, November 2002.

Product Description
his book is the ultimate and exclusive resource for anybody interested in the clash between the gentle citizens of “Pepperland” and the hated “Blue Meanies” who threatened to rob the world of its color and music.

Until now, very little true research has ever been done about this memorable achievement in The Beatles’career. This book reveals countless facts about the movie from the man who has met with nearly everyone associated with the film. It includes photos depicting scenes and characters from the movie, as well as candid shots of many behind-the-scenes people.

Featuring original art from the movie, an introduction by Sir George Martin (The Beatles’ producer) and a foreword by Erich Segal (scriptwriter of the movie), this amazing book is for any fan of The Beatles’ music, movies or animation.

Dr. Robert Hieronimus, a noted Beatles fan and historian, is the authority on Yellow Submarine.

• Includes many colorful slides depicting scenes and characters from the movie
• The ultimate and exclusive resource for fans of Yellow Submarine
• Features new, original cover art from Yellow Submarine art director Heinz Edelman

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Product Details

• Paperback: 430 pages
• Publisher: Krause Publications (February 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873493605
• ISBN-13: 978-0873493604
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #673,963 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nice Try, But..., April 12, 2002

By	tashcrash (South Shore, MA) - See all my reviews

Just as when the dvd of YELLOW SUBMARINE was announced, I was anxiously, sleeplessly awaiting the arrival of this book. The cover alone was so promising, I could barely contain my anticipation.
Now that I've read the final version of this text, I feel quite let down. Granted, Dr. Hieronimus took on an obviously impossible mission, that is, to chronicle the birth, development, and legacy of one of the greatest animated works in history, one that had an extremely convoluted production and development. While I can't blame him for trying, his claims that the book was extensively researched over 20+ years is quite a stretch. While the many interviews demonstrate his attempts at comprehension, the slapdash results suggest a bit of a rush job.
The text itself is marred by redundancy (he could have easily shaved off 100 pages without losing a detail) and his insistent lapses into the first-person are, at times, overly congratulatory. The many anecdotes provided by Heinz Edelmann are reasonably incisive, yet they are inexplicably scattered throughout the book with no chonological guide for the reader.
The one advantage of such a book is that I finally have a strong sense of just who it was who did indeed create (or co-create) SUBMARINE, an aspect of the film I have always found troubling (Boy, Al Brodax certainly allowed himself a large onscreen credit!). I've always been aware of Edelmann's contribution, but not so those of Charlie Jenkins, who was the apparent other genius who worked extensively on giving the film its one-of-a-kind style. The author does quite a decent job sorting through the primary participants, and he does (inadvertently?) put Brodax squarely in his place.
A full-color picture book, though cost-prohibitve, would have proven far more satisfying. For a film so purely visual, the book displays little of the actual ART of the project - anyone who, upon picking up the book for the first time and flips directly to the color panels in the center, will be woefully disappointed, for there is nothing new here whatsoever, and too much time is spent on the 1999 reissue. As I quickly discovered, the cover is completely misleading.
Still, I respect the effort, but can't disguise my disappointment.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This author needed an editor...badly, April 23, 2003

By	GBS "showbiz27" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

"Yellow Submarine", in its day, was a remarkable achievement in animation. While not exactly a Beatles movie, more inspired by their songs than anything truly related, it spun a lovely fairy-tale and used the spirit of the group members as heroes. More than 30 years after its release, the story of how it was made remained fascinating to fans of classic animation.

So it was with some disappointment that I slogged through this book. The author has certainly done his homework. He's turned over every remaining stone and then some, found virtually all living participants, documented every step of the way to the screen for this story. And he's turned the story of one of the most imaginative movies of the 60s into the dullest book on the planet.

It's not that what he has researched isn't in itself interesting. It's just that he can't tell what's real important information and what isn't. It seems like he collected masses of information and interviews, typed it all up on 3x5 cards and simply pasted it together into a book. Minutiae are treated as revelation; no detail is too minor to be included, and repeated. Redundancies abound; he has three participants telling the same story, one after the other, with little new between them. He repeats similar items 4 chapters beyond the first mention. Order and organization? Hardly. It just goes on and on and on.

I can't fault the material that he's come up with, and in fact I applaud it. But what this author desperately needed was an editor, someone to assist him in crystallizing the material into a narrative that best told the tale of the creation of this landmark film. Instead, this "author" has simply assembled his notes into a word processor, and left it to the reader to sort it out. That's not scholarship - that's clerical.

Nonetheless, it's all that's out there and the information throughout is valuable. If you've got the patience to sit through it.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like a communal diary from the Yellow Sub, July 9, 2003

By	Bernie Rohdenbahr (Cuddleford Manor, NY) - See all my reviews

I've always been curious about this film and what the people were like who were behind the curtain. It's been well documented elsewhere that The Beatles didn't make this film, but I never read much about this crazy group of artists in the swinging London of the 1960s who did. Finally, in this book, we get to hear what these creative people thought about while they developed the revolutionary ideas that went into this film. And unlike many other authors of Beatles-related books, who tend to focus on the glamour of The Beatles' personalities instead of the work itself, Dr. Bob Hieronimus does not skimp with the quotes from my new heroes, the struggling artists who brought Yellow Sub from concept to screen. The book reads like a communal diary from all the participants. The absorbing style is largely comprised of first-hand accounts from the film's creators, organized in such a clever way, with just enough commentary between, to allow readers to reach their own conclusions of who among the film's creators were Blue Meanies and who were Pepperlanders. I, for one, wouldn't want to miss one word of them. It's about time they had a chance to tell their own story and be given a stage to do so.