Aug. 29, 1964 - A dusty station wagon with a Minnesota license plate lurched to a half in front of Delmonico’s Hotel in New York City this afternoon, and the worried driver popped his head out of the window.
“Is this a riot?” he asked.
“No,” answered a weary policeman, “just the Beatles.”
For most of the day, the old hotel at Park Ave. and 59th St. was in a state of siege. More than 1,000 teenage girls stood behind police barricades on the east side of the avenue shrieking like starlings as a deployment of 40 foot patrolmen and a dozen mounted policemen struggled to keep order.
On side streets, clumps of girls in tight pants plotted the dark strategy that would gain them entrance to the hotel and to the objects of their hysterical affection — the four Liverpudlians named Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison.
By the time the sun went down, the police and a dozen private guards had turned away scores. A girl who identified herself as Linda Beatle burst into tears when a policeman told her she could not possibly be Mr. Starr’s sister.
Three other girls stepped from a cab at the hotel entrance and announced grandly that they were residents on the way to their penthouse.
“All right, girls — it was a good try,” a captain said, shooting them away.
Behind the hotel, three ambitious young women scaled the wall of one building, scrambled across the roofs of several others, and reached the fourth-floor level of the hotel’s water tower before they were stopped.
Across the street, 20 girls were trapped in an elevator for half an hour as they attempted to gain the roof of the building.
In a sixth-floor suite at Delmonico’s, the four Beatles slept into the afternoon, apparently undisturbed by the screams and chants of “Show your faces, Show your faces,” from the crowd outside.
Later, the quartet and their entourage dined on 48 frankfurters and 6 salamis sent from Nathan’s Famous of Coney Island and prepared for tonight’s second concert at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium.
Two lady guests at Delmonico’s gave their views on the Beatles today.
“They’re perfect gentlemen,” said the gal who lives right next door, in Suite 601. She is Mrs. Cora D. Simon, and she’s a frail, tiny, white-haired lass of 92.
“I love them all,” said Debbi Brandstatter, who was the only girl to get into the Beatles’ pad during their stay. Debbie is 5, lives at 135-02 Francis Lewis Blvd., Laurelton, Queens, and she was standing in the sixth-floor hall when the Beatles returned last night from their concert. They invited her into 602, patted her head, and chatted.
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