<i>Yellow Submarine</i> Surfaces
Liverpool is going yellow for its most famous sons with a giant Beatlennium street party on Monday to relaunch a new enhanced version of the film Yellow Submarine.
And as CBS News This Morning Correspondent Mark Phillips reports, the U.S. Postal Service will honor the world's most famous pop group with the unveiling of a special stamp.
The Beatles got more than "a sky of blue and sea of green" as the song goes, as the famed band joins the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Winston Churchill as the only Britons honored with their own American postage stamp.
An estimated 180 tribute bands from Argentina to Turkey are expected to blare out their greatest hits to 150,000 fans in celebration of the classic filmÂ's re-release.
It's been more than three decades since the Beatles released a catchy combination of music and love, and although other actors did their movie voices, the film's producers think there's a market for the psychedelic colors and bell-bottoms.
"I think this film has a tremendous potential," says Bruce Markeo, vice president of MGM. "There's a whole new generation who have never seen it, of young children."
None of the Beatles are expected to attend the festivities, but Paul McCartney still seems touched by all the attention, particularly the U.S. Postal ServiceÂ's recognition.
"I'll send lots of letters to people with little yellow submarines on them. I think it's great," he says.
The 1960's animated classic film has been digitally restored. The submarine is ready to set sail again through psychedelic seas to save Pepperland from the music-loathing Blue Meanies.
Among those attending the premiere will be its scriptwriter Erich Segal, famed for the best-selling Love Story.
At the time, he was a professor of Greek and Latin at Yale University, totally wrapped up in his academic studies and unaware of the Beatles phenomenon.
"When the producer told me this film would be a big deal because Sergeant Pepper had already sold 3 million albums, I was so hermetically sealed in my academic world that I said 'Er, Mrs. Pepper must be very happy,' " he recalls.
The title song has been translated into several languages including Yiddish and Latin. For those wishing to sing along in Latin, the chorus is "Vivimus in navi lutea, in navi lutea, in navi lutea."
McCartney recalls how the idea for the song came to him. "I was just drifting off to sleep and there's that nice twilight zone when you drift off. I remember thinking that it would be a good idea to write a children's song," he says.
"I thought of images and the color yellow came to me and a submarine came to me and I thought 'That's kind of nice, like a toy, [a] very childish yellow submarine.'"
And with all the hype surrounding the relaunch of Beatlemania, the merchandising marketeers are determined not to miss out - they are offerng everything from Yellow Submarine baby bibs to boxer shorts.