Yoko’s stolen camera

In the summer of 1969, John and Yoko had been in a car accident while in Scotland, and the doctor had ordered Yoko to stay in bed for some time. The others could not believe their own eyes when, on July 9, John and Yoko turned up in the studio with a big bed for Yoko to rest in. The above pictured photo is from one of the sessions for the Abbey Road album, and the photo was taken from Yoko’s point of view.

This and many more photos were from a film roll in Yoko Ono’s camera, which was stolen in 1969.  Ever since then, the photos have circulated among the girls who stole the camera, and one of them eventually sold the photos to a British tabloid newspaper, the Daily Mirror in the nineties. After that, the photos have been published many places on the internet, in social media groups and in Beatles fanzines. Very often, one or two of the photos are published somewhere without the back story, which leads to lots of speculations. Well, just point to this article!

Other photos from the film roll show Yoko, Pattie Harrison and Linda McCartney in the same bed.

For the next several weeks, Yoko practically lived in that bed. John even requested a microphone to be set up for her so that he could hear her through the headphones.

One day, Yoko Ono had gained some strength and jumped out of her “sick bed” to nick one of George Harrison’s biscuits from a packet he had put on his guitar amplifier.  Harrison made it clear that Yoko had crossed the line, to put it mildly, and an argument broke out between him and Lennon. Fortunately it died out pretty quickly.

There are also some photos of the Beatles in a movie theatre the day before, enjoying a preview of an early cut of the “Let It Be” film, plus photos from a dinner party after the screening, attended by John and Yoko, Peter Brown, Paul and Linda, with Michael Lindsay-Hogg and his girlfriend at the time, actress Jean Marsh.

Sunday, July 20, 1969, a rough cut of the “Let It Be” film was screened for The Beatles. All four Beatles were present, John with Yoko, Paul with Linda, George with Pattie and his parents, plus Terry Doran.

Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg recalled that this version was about an hour longer than the released version. The day after, he was asked for a change:

Are you happy with the movie?

Michael Lindsay-Hogg: Some of it.

How so?

Michael Lindsay-Hogg: It’s hard when your stars are your producers. And there were four of them. […] A lot I liked got cut out. […] I had to cut out half an hour of John and Yoko, really interesting stuff.

Why?

Michael Lindsay-Hogg: We’d had a screening, they all were there, and the next day I got a call from Peter Brown to say it would probably be a good idea to cut the John and Yoko. I asked why. ‘Let me put it this way,’ he said, ‘I’ve had three calls this morning to say it should come out.’”

From “Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York, and Points Beyond” by Michael Lindsay-Hogg

While the Lennons and McCartneys went to dinner, George and his father stayed up that night to watch the Apollo 11 lunar landing. As did your’s truly!

After the dinner party, some more photos were taken in the car on the ride home and in bed when they got home.

The two most controversial photos from this film roll and possibly the biggest payoffs to the people who stole the camera were nude photos of John Lennon. Here’s how one of these were depicted in the British tabloid Daily Mirror:

The newspaper posted some of the photos which we have used in this article, although some were cropped edits of the original frames. Also in the paper were both Lennon nudes, although censored.