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Rare Color Photos of the Beatles Going Up for Auction

Collection documents the band's first U.S. tour

The Beatles taking off for a tour in the United States from London.
Getty Images
January 6, 2013 10:18 AM ET

A collection of unpublished early color photographs of the Beatles are going up for auction in the U.K., the BBC reports.

The photos were taken in 1964 during the Beatles' first U.S. tour. They include stage shots of George Harrison with his red Rickenbacker guitar, close-up portraits of the group at a press conference at the Las Vegas Sahara Hotel and photos from a private party at the Beverly Hills mansion of Capitol Records president Alan Livingston. Since color film was expensive at the time, most images of the Beatles before 1965 were in black and white.

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The photos were snapped by Dr. Robert Beck, a physicist and inventor who left the collection of 65 slides in an archive at his Hollywood home after his death in 2002. They will be sold by Omega Auctions on March 22nd to mark the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles' first album, Please Please Me.

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