When the Beatles needed help filming the Alpine sequences of their famous 1965 movie, they knew exactly where to head. Keen to ensure that their location could guarantee heaps of snow, they travelled to Obertauern, a high-altitude resort in Salzburger Land, Austria, to shoot key scenes for their second movie, Help! To mark the 60th anniversary of the release of the film, Obertauern is organising a “Home of The Beatles” festival. From 6th March to 1st May 2025, the resort will hold a series of events to honour the Fab Four.
These will include Beatles doubles skiing down the slopes, concerts by cover bands and a public reading from a new book When the Beatles Turned Austria Upside Down.
Left: a replica of the wooden piano at the Grünwaldkopfbahn top station, where the scenes were filmed. Right: The Beatles Monument in front of the Hotel Edelweiss, where the Fab Four stayed.
Photographs and original memorabilia from the era are on view at an exclusive exhibition in the Obertauern Tourist Office. And of course, the movie Help! will also be screened.
The highlight of the “Home of The Beatles Festival”, however, is a concert, A Symphonic Tribute to the Beatles in Obertauern, which takes place at the Gamsleiten Car Park P5 on 28th March. In the company of soloist Monika Ballwein, the acclaimed 46-piece Salzburg Philharmonic Orchestra will play such timeless Beatles classics such as “Hey Jude” and “Let It Be”.
Left: The Beatles posing for the photographers on the Kirchbühel slopes. Right: To the amusement of the locals, The Beatles moved from one scene to the next by snow truck as it was the easiest way to get around.
Obertauern residents are overflowing with anecdotes about this storied period in the resort’s history. For instance, the film crew stayed at the Marietta Hotel (now Places by Valamar). Gloria “Gigi” Mackh, then reigning Miss Austria, whose father owned the hotel, 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 warped 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!”
The hotel received no compensation from the band, but instead, they got something rather more valuable: an exclusive concert given by the Beatles just for the hotel guests that stretched until the wee small hours. It was the only concert The Beatles ever performed in Austria.
And 60 years on, it is still being celebrated.
Author: James Rampton
All images © Tourism Obertauern
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