Petula Clark
Sally "Petula" Clark is a British singer, actress, and songwriter. She started her professional career as a child performer and is still active more than 80 years later.
Clark's professional career began in November 1942 as a child entertainer on BBC Radio. In 1954, she charted with "The Little Shoemaker", the first of her big UK hits, and within two years she began recording in French. Her international successes have included "Prends mon cœur", "Sailor", "Romeo", and "Chariot". Hits in German, Italian and Spanish followed.
In late 1964, Clark's success extended to the United States with a five-year run of career-defining, often upbeat singles, many written or co-written by Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent. These include her signature song "Downtown", "I Know a Place", "My Love", "A Sign of the Times", "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love", "Who Am I", "Colour My World", "This Is My Song", "Don't Sleep in the Subway" and "Kiss Me Goodbye". Between January 1965 and April 1968, Clark charted with nine US top 20 hits in the US, where she was called "the First Lady of the British Invasion". Her international chart success was unequalled in recording history. In 1968 she was the recipient of the MIDEM international award for the highest worldwide sales by a female artist. This followed on from her 1967 MIDEM award for most sales in Europe by a European artist.
It is estimated that Clark has sold 100 million records. She also enjoyed success in the musical film Finian's Rainbow, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for best actress in a musical, and in the stage musicals The Sound of Music, Sunset Boulevard and Mary Poppins, for which she received BAFTA nominations. Clark, along with David Cassidy, has also been credited with rescuing Blood Brothers from failure in her Broadway debut.
Biography
Early career
Petula Clark was born Sally Clark on 15 November 1932 in Ewell, Surrey, England to Doris and Leslie Noah Clark. Both of Clark's parents were nurses at Long Grove Hospital in Epsom. Clark's mother had Welsh ancestry and her father was English. Clark's stage name, Petula, was invented by her father, who joked that it was a combination of the names of his two former girlfriends, Pet and Ulla.Clark grew up in Abercanaid, near Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. Her grandfather was a coal miner. Her first ever live audience was in 1939 at the Colliers' Arms in Abercanaid. She also recalls living just outside London during the Blitz, watching the dogfights in the air and running to air-raid shelters with her sister. Later, when she was eight, she joined other children to record messages with the BBC to be broadcast to members of their families in the forces. The recording event was in the Criterion Theatre, an underground theatre that was safe. When the air-raid siren sounded other children were upset and a call went out for someone to step forward and sing to calm them. Clark volunteered, and they liked her voice so much in the control room that they recorded her. Her song was "Mighty Like a Rose".
As a child, Clark sang in the chapel choir and showed a talent for mimicry, impersonating Vera Lynn, Carmen Miranda and Sophie Tucker for her family and friends. Her father introduced her to theatre in 1944 when he took her to see Flora Robson in a production of Mary Stuart. She later recalled that after the performance, "I made up my mind then and there I was going to be an actress.... I wanted to be Ingrid Bergman more than anything else in the world." However her first public performances were as a singer. In 1945, she performed with an orchestra in the entrance hall of Bentall's Department Store in Kingston upon Thames for a tin of toffee and a gold wristwatch.
Career start
From a chance beginning at the age of seven, Clark appeared on radio, in film, in print, on television and on recordings. In October 1942, the nine-year-old Clark made her radio debut while attending a BBC broadcast with her father. She was trying to send a message to an uncle who was stationed overseas, but the broadcast was delayed by an air raid. During the bombing the producer requested that someone perform to settle the jittery theatre audience and she volunteered a rendering of "Mighty Lak' a Rose" to an enthusiastic response. She then repeated her performance for the broadcast audience, launching a series of some 500 appearances in programmes designed to entertain the troops.In addition to radio work, Clark frequently toured the United Kingdom with fellow child performer Julie Andrews. Nicknamed the "Singing Sweetheart", she performed for George VI, Winston Churchill and Bernard Montgomery. She also became known as "Britain's Shirley Temple", and was considered a mascot by the British Army, some of whose troops plastered her photos on their tanks for good luck as they advanced into battle.
While she was performing at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1944, Clark was discovered by the film director Maurice Elvey, who cast her, at the age of 12, as the precocious orphaned waif Irma in his war drama Medal for the General. In quick succession she performed in Strawberry Roan, I Know Where I'm Going!, London Town, Here Come the Huggetts, Vote for Huggett and The Huggetts Abroad, the second, third and fourth of four Huggett Family films. She worked with Anthony Newley in Vice Versa and Alec Guinness in The Card.
In 1945, she was featured in the comic Radio Fun, in which she was billed as "Radio's Merry Mimic". By then she felt that she had played child parts for too long.
In 1946, Clark began her television career with an appearance on a BBC variety show, Cabaret Cartoons, which led to her being signed to host her own afternoon series, Petula Clark. Pet's Parlour followed in 1950.
In 1947, she met Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson at the Peter Maurice Publishing Company. The two collaborated musically and were linked romantically over the following ten years. In 1949 Henderson introduced her to the record producer Alan A. Freeman, who, together with her father Leslie, formed Polygon Records, for which she recorded her earliest hits. She recorded her first release that year, "Put Your Shoes On, Lucy", for EMI, and further recordings with vocalist Benny Lee on Decca. The Polygon label was financed with part of her earnings. She scored a number of major hits in the UK during the 1950s, including "The Little Shoemaker", "Majorca", "Suddenly There's a Valley" and "With All My Heart". "The Little Shoemaker" was an international hit, reaching number one in Australia, the first of many number-one records in her career.
Near the end of 1955, Polygon Records was sold to Nixa Records, then part of Pye Records, leading to the establishment of Pye Nixa Records. This effectively signed Clark to the Pye label in the UK, for which she recorded until the early 1970s.
During this period she showed a keen interest in encouraging new talent. She suggested that Henderson be allowed to record his own music, and he had five chart hits on Polygon/Pye between 1955 and 1960.
European fame
In 1957, Clark was invited to appear at the Paris Olympia, where, despite her misgivings and a bad cold, she was received with acclaim. The following day, she was invited to the office of Vogue Records to discuss a contract. There she met her future longtime publicist, collaborator and husband, Claude Wolff. Clark was attracted immediately, and when she was told that she would be working with him if she signed with the Vogue label she agreed.In 1960, she embarked on a concert tour of France and Belgium with Sacha Distel, who remained a close friend until his death in 2004. Gradually she moved further into the continent, recording in German, French, Italian and Spanish.
While she focused on her new career in France, she continued to achieve hit records in the UK into the early 1960s. Her 1961 recording of "Sailor" became her first number-one hit in the UK, while such follow-up recordings as "Romeo" and "My Friend the Sea" landed her in the British Top-10 later that year. "Romeo" sold more than one million copies around the world and won her her first gold disc, which was awarded by the Recording Industry Association of America. In France "Ya Ya Twist" and "Chariot" became smash hits in 1962, while German and Italian versions of her English and French recordings charted, as well. Her recordings of several Serge Gainsbourg songs were also big sellers. In addition, she was given at this time a present of the song "Un Enfant" by Jacques Brel, with whom she toured. Clark is one of only a handful of performers to be given a song by Brel. A live recording of this song charted in Canada.
In 1963, she wrote the soundtrack for the French crime film A Couteaux Tirés – released in 1964 – and made a cameo appearance as herself in the film. Although it was only a mild success, it added a new dimension—that of film composer—to her career. Additional film scores she composed include Entre ciel et mer, Rêves d'enfant, La bande à Bebel, and Pétain. Six themes from the last were released on the CD In Her Own Write in 2007.
Clark was the subject of This Is Your Life in February 1964, April 1975 and March 1996, becoming the only person to receive the television tribute three times.
Global fame – the "Downtown" era
By 1964, Clark's British recording career was foundering. Composer/arranger Tony Hatch, who had been assisting her with her work for Vogue Records in France and Pye Records in the UK, flew to her home in Paris with new song material he hoped would interest her, but she found none of it appealing. Desperate, he played for her a few chords of an incomplete song that had been inspired by his recent first trip to New York City. Upon hearing the melody, Clark told him that if he could write lyrics as good as the melody, she wanted to record the tune as her next single—"Downtown". Hatch has subsequently denied originally offering "Downtown" to the Drifters.Neither Clark, who was performing in Canada when the song first received major air play, nor Hatch realised the effect the song would have on their respective careers. Released in four separate languages in late 1964, "Downtown" was a success in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, and Italy, and Rhodesia, Japan, and India as well. During a visit to London, Warner Bros. executive Joe Smith heard it and acquired the rights for the United States. "Downtown" went to number one in the American charts in January 1965, and 3 million copies were sold in the United States.
"Downtown" was the first of 15 consecutive Top-40 hits she achieved in the U.S., including "I Know a Place", "My Love", "A Sign of the Times", "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love", "This Is My Song", and "Don't Sleep in the Subway". The American recording industry honoured her with Grammy Awards for Best Rock & Roll Recording of 1964 for "Downtown" and for Best Contemporary Vocal Performance of 1965 – Female for "I Know a Place". In 2004, her recording of "Downtown" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Her recording successes led to frequent appearances on American variety programmes hosted by Ed Sullivan and Dean Martin, guest shots on Hullabaloo, Shindig!, The Kraft Music Hall and The Hollywood Palace, and inclusion in musical specials such as The Best on Record and Rodgers and Hart Today.
In 1968, NBC invited Clark to host her own special in the US, and in doing so, she inadvertently made television history. While singing a duet of "On the Path of Glory", an antiwar song that she had composed, with guest Harry Belafonte, she took hold of his arm, to the dismay of a representative from the Chrysler Corporation, who feared that the moment would provoke racial backlash from Southern viewers. When he insisted that they substitute a different take, with Clark and Belafonte standing well away from each other, Clark and the executive producer of the show – her husband, Wolff – refused, destroyed all other takes of the song, and delivered the finished programme to NBC with the touch intact.
The Chrysler representative lost his job and the programme aired on 8 April 1968, four days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., with high ratings, critical acclaim, and a Primetime Emmy nomination. It has erroneously been described as the first instance on American television of physical contact between a black man and a white woman, forgetting many previous instances, including Frankie Lymon dancing with a white girl on Alan Freed's live ABC show The Big Beat on 19 July 1957, Nancy Sinatra kissing Sammy Davis Jr., on her 1967 Movin' with Nancy TV special, and Louis Armstrong shaking hands with "What's My Line?" panelists Dorothy Kilgallen and Arlene Francis in 1953. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Belafonte telecast, Clark and Wolff appeared at the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan on 22 September 2008, to discuss the broadcast and its impact, following a showing of the programme.
Clark was later the hostess of two more specials; Portrait of Petula, shown on both the NBC and CBC networks in early 1970, and one for ABC which served as a pilot for a projected weekly series. She starred in the BBC television series This Is Petula Clark, which aired from mid-1966 to early 1968.
Clark revived her film career in the late 1960s, starring in two big musical films. In Finian's Rainbow, she starred opposite Fred Astaire, and she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for her performance. The following year, she was cast with Peter O'Toole in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, a musical adaptation of the classic James Hilton novella.
Throughout the late 1960s, she toured in concerts in the U.S., and she often appeared in supper clubs such as the Copacabana in New York City, the Ambassador Hotel's Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, and the Empire Room at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
During this period Clark continued her interest in encouraging new talent. These efforts also supported the launch of Herb Alpert and his A&M record label. In 1968, she brought the French composer/arranger Michel Colombier to the U.S. to work as her musical director, and introduced him to Alpert. Colombier went on to co-write the film score for Purple Rain with Prince, composed the acclaimed pop symphony Wings, and a number of soundtracks for American films. Richard Carpenter credited her with bringing his sister Karen and him to Alpert's attention when they performed at a premiere party for the 1969 Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
Clark has recalled that she and Karen Carpenter went to see Elvis Presley perform in Las Vegas and that afterwards "He was flirting with both of us, 'Wow, the two biggest girl pop stars in my dressing room. That's pretty good'... He didn't have us, exactly, but he had a darned good try. Not going to talk about that any more."
Clark was one of the backing vocalists on John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band anthem "Give Peace a Chance". She was performing in Montreal in June 1969, and was being heckled by the audience due to her bilingual performance. She went to see Lennon for advice on dealing with this. He and his wife Yoko Ono were staying at the city's Queen Elizabeth Hotel during their bed-in protest. Clark subsequently ended up on the recording of Give Peace a Chance. On 15 November 1969, her concert, An Evening with Petula, from the Royal Albert Hall in London, was the first BBC One colour transmission.