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Photographer Bob Gomel Recalls Day He Hung Out With The Beatles Poolside, Shares Lost Photos

By Shelley Hazen
Published on: 07:22 PST, Jul 9, 2015

Linda Pollak remembered clearly the day The Beatles had a swim in her parents’ pool. Photographer Bob Gomel and others had gathered there for an impromptu photo shoot to avoid fans wracked by the first waves of Beatlemania.

She was 15 at the time, watching perhaps the world’s most famous musicians in history acting like goofballs in the swimming pool as Bob and other photographers took pictures, Time reported. She recounted the experience for the Chicago Tribune in 1989.

“The photographers asked my three brothers and me to get into the pool first, so they could focus. Then the Beatles tiptoed in to take our positions … They started splashing and goofing around, except John. He got out of the pool and sat in the back with his wife, Cynthia, just watching. Even then he wasn’t much for publicity.”

He recalled the “four pale, skinny guys” — Paul, John, George, and Ringo — dressed in matching bathing suits, splashing each other and doing cannonballs off the diving board. One candid shot Gomel captured of the famous Beatles, just being normal young guys, still hangs in his gallery.

“They were the whitest-white people I had ever met. When they took their shirts off, living the life in the nightclubs in Hamburg and London, it was blinding,” Bob told CBS News.

That day in Miami was historic. The Fab Four had just landed stateside and LIFE Magazine set an army of photographers to capture the band’s first tour and TV sports. Gomel was among them.

He arrived a week into the tour to photograph The Beatles after a second performance on The Ed Sullivan Show at the Deuville Hotel. But a local DJ spilled the beans and fans swarmed the hotel, where the shoot was supposed to be held.

Instead, everyone, Bob included, headed to Paul Pollak’s house. He and his wife, Jerri, owned the Deuville. Turns out, the spot was perfect — Gomel and the other photographers were able to catch The Beatles, basking in the glow of success, at ease and away from their screaming fans.

Paul, John, George, and Ringo were “all well-mannered and friendly. He said their stardom had not affected their personalities.”

Gomel’s pictures were never published in Life, the editors picking a different photo — at the same shoot — by a staffer named John Loengard. Now, the photos have been revealed to the public for the first time, and are currently on display at the Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe.

[Photo Courtesy Express Newspapers/Getty Images

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