Happy Birthday, Petula Clark!
Petula says she’ll continue to work and perform as long as there’s an audience. Judging from this appearance in France a few months ago, she still has an audience.
It was 40 years ago, on Petula’s birthday, that BBC One TV broadcast its first programme in colour. BBC Two had been transmitting in colour for some months. The first colour show on BBC One was, “An Evening With Petula.”
5 comments November 15th, 2009
As I’ve said before, I feel that Petula Clark’s career is one of the most impressive ever in popular entertainment. She started as an endearing child star in England, developed into a sexy adult actress, then became an international singing superstar — which was where we caught up with her in the States — and she’s still going strong!
I’ve spliced together about ten minutes of Petula as Lee Nicholls, a perky and resourceful stewardess in a 1954 comic caper flick, “The Runaway Bus”. It’s not the greatest print, but at least it’s available in the U.S., including Netflix.
Oh, dear. Did I hear Pet ask for some uppers? No wonder she was so perky!
For a much more recent view of Petula, here’s a link recommended by David Moncur. Turn it up!
2 comments July 7th, 2009
The A-side of this single by a British band went to #1 in the US in 1966, and it sounds nothing at all like the lovely little ditty on the B-side.
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The YouTube player has the New Vaudeville Band performing the song, with the first tune, “Peek A Boo” being more interesting because it’s not familiar. (From there it’s an easy leap to Tiny Tim and to Robert Crumb’s Cheap Suit Serenaders.) Then Petula Clark sings “Winchester Cathedral” followed by a more familiar performance of her own hit, “This Is My Song.”
The original “Winchester Cathedral” LP, in my hands at this moment, doesn’t have “Peek A Boo”, so I had to find it elsewhere.
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The New Vaudeville Band, 1966
5 comments July 5th, 2009
Petula Clark is going to Canada in September. She’s going to talk about the film “I Know Where I’m Going!” in which she appeared as a girl of twelve, as seen in this video clip that I first featured over two years ago.
In case the article at the link above loads too slowly, or if it disappears, you’ll find the text below. The website for the event is at this link. What fun!
Here’s something else that’s fun. Petula singing “Downtown” in German. I admit to having swiped this from the Keep the Coffee Coming blog.
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Petula Clark to take part in film screening
Posted By BILL HENRY, SUN TIMES STAFFPetula Clark is coming to Wiarton in September.
The legendary British pop songstress won’t be singing. Instead, she’ll help screen and talk about her role at age 13 in the 1946 romance “I Know Where I’m Going.”
The movie, which is set in Tobermory, Scotland, was launched in North America April 29, 1946 at Bruce Peninsula’s Tobermory.
Wiarton resident Paul Kastner was 19 then and was among the 900 people who doubled the tiny fishing village’s population for the unusual media event.
Tobermory was an isolated fishing village then, still without electricity, and served by bumpy washboard gravel roads, Kastner said yesterday.
Many of the fewer than 500 people who lived there were just back from the Second World War.
When a Toronto publicist pitched the plan to premier the new film at the tip of the Bruce, the Bruce Peninsula Tourist Association got behind it.
Residents spruced up their boats. Toronto politicians, photographers and film camera operators, newspaper and radio reporters, film industry people, provincial tourism officials all piled on a bus to Tobermory. There was even a plan to rename Doctor Island near Tobermory to Kiloran Island to match the Scottish Island in the film.
Kastner had forgotten about the premier until a year or so ago when he read that “I Know Where I’m Going” was revived and released on DVD.
Recalling all the pomp of six decades ago, Kastner thought of reviving the film in Tobermory or Wiarton as a fund raising event.
“I had in mind originally to replicate all of it,” he said.
It was an “historic moment in Canadian entertainment history” that should not be forgotten, Kastner said.
He thought at first about a revival in Tobermory, where the movie was screened recently by a local group. But his plans to include Clark and make it a major event were more appropriate for the larger Wiarton community, Kastner said.
Clark lives now in Geneva, Switzerland. She was a British child film and stage star by age 11, and “I Know Where I’m Going” was her fourth film. The singer later came to international prominence in the 1960s with such pop hits as “Downtown” and “Don’t Sleep in The Subway”.
Clark is to appear at 7 p.m. Sept. 18 at the 400-seat Peninsula Shores Performing Arts Centre. She will talk about making the movie, its late stars, her wartime role as a child entertainer performing to 200 Allied Forces camps in Britain, her 40 some movies, and subsequent singing career with more than 60 million records sold worldwide. In January, she released a new DVD of love songs.
I Know Where I’m Going starred Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey. Film critic Barry Norman has listed it among the all time top 100 movies.
Novelist Raymond Chandler said “I’ve never seen a picture which smelled of the wind and rain in quite this way nor one which so beautifully exploited the kind of scenery people actually live with, rather than the kind which is commercialized as a show place.”
Filmmaker Martin Scorsese once said he had “reached the point of thinking there were no more masterpieces to discover, until I sawI Know Where I’m Going.”
The movie will be shown at 8:30 p. m. after Clark speaks.
Kastner said she waived her fee and money raised will go to Miracle Place — Wiarton, the Bruce Peninsula’s first affordable rental apartment housing. Construction on that project is expected to begin next fall, and details of the campaign to raise $380,000 are to be announced soon.
Tickets to see Clark and “I Know Where I’m Going” are to go on sale next week at $20, Kastner said, once the website www.petulaclarkinwiarton.com goes online.
2 comments June 30th, 2009
Here in Massachusetts, gay marriage is such a non-issue. The schizophrenic ruling by the California Supreme Court is bizarre. Just give gay people the right to marry and be done with it.
This very funny comedy sketch, with Dean Martin looking surprisingly Abe Lincoln-ish, has Petula Clark counseling an unintentionally married pair. Pet always seemed to loosen up when she was with Deano, and her appearances on his show are a lot of fun to watch. From the apparent ages of the stars, the racy dialog, and a fairly obvious reference to John Dean’s Watergate testimony, I’d say this is from 1973, and not 1965, as claimed.
Add comment May 27th, 2009
David Moncour has sent this link to an interview with Petula Clark, in French, including the music clips. Thank you, Davie!
http://franckhermann.spaces.live.com/blog/
The audio is linked on Petula’s name, and it isn’t embedded, so depending on how your file associations are set up it will come up on one local player or another. How about I embed it here, so you don’t have to bother doing that?
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How about this pair of pictures? On the left is Petula with actor Michael Redgrave in 1942, and on the right they’re together again in 1968, filming Goodbye Mr. Chips.
For many years, Petula has been great pals with Redgrave’s daughter Lynn, who’s about 5′10″ tall. As you can see, Pet is petite!
I see that it’s time to renew my subscription to Petula & Company, published by the International Petula Clark Society. There’s all sorts of stuff in there about Pet, facts and photos, that you won’t find anywhere else. I particularly enjoy it for providing so much background about her early years in England. As I keep saying, as far as we were concerned in America, Petula appeared out of nowhere, polished and professional.
Add comment March 15th, 2009