Peter Glenville‘s Becket, a truly great film, opened on a reserved-seat basis at Loew’s State (B’way and 45th) on March 11, 1964. It was still playing there when Richard Lester‘s A Hard Day’s Night moved into the Astor on 8.12.64 — exactly five months later. And for a few short weeks they played opposite each other in the very heart of Times Square — literally a stone’s throw apart.
Which film is the more highly regarded today? A Hard Day’s Night, of course — better known, a genre groundbreaker, “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals,” etc. But also because Becket is, to this day, still a generally underseen, certainly under-appreciated drama about ethics, political maneuvering, and the delusion and corruption of power, not to mention having been the very first mainstream Hollywood film that, five years before the Stonewall riots, explored something very close to an actual love affair between dudes…albeit a sexless one.
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