. During the 1950s she started recording in
and having international success in both French and English, with such
songs as "The Little Shoemaker", "Baby Lover", "With All My Heart" and "
During the 1960s she became known globally for her popular upbeat hits, including "
She has sold more than 68 million records throughout her career.
,
England. Her father Leslie coined her first name, and joked that it was
a combination of the names of two former girlfriends, Pet and Ulla.
for the amusement of family and friends.
;
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
However, her first public performances were as a singer, performing with an orchestra in the entrance hall of
and a gold wristwatch, in 1939.
Career start
From a chance beginning as a nine-year-old, Clark would appear on
radio, film, print, television and recordings by the time she turned
seventeen.
In October 1942, nine-year-old Clark made her radio debut while
attending a BBC broadcast with her father. Attending in the hope of
sending a message to an uncle stationed overseas, the broadcast was
delayed by an
air raid.
During the bombing, the producer requested that someone perform to
settle the jittery theater 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.
[5]
In addition to radio work, Clark frequently toured the United Kingdom with fellow child performer
Julie Andrews. The "Singing Sweetheart" heard by
George VI,
Winston Churchill and
Bernard Montgomery. Clark became known as "Britain's
Shirley Temple," and she was considered a mascot by the
British Army, whose troops plastered her photos on their tanks for good luck as they advanced into battle.
[6]
In 1944, while performing at London's
Royal Albert Hall, Clark was discovered by film director
Maurice Elvey, who cast her as precocious orphaned waif Irma in his weepy war drama
Medal for the General. In quick succession, she starred in
Strawberry Roan, I Know Where I'm Going!, London Town, and
Here Come the Huggetts,
the first in a series of Huggett Family films based on a British radio
series.
Although some of the films she made in the UK during the 1940s
and 1950s were
B-films,
[citation needed] she worked with
Anthony Newley in
Vice Versa (directed by
Peter Ustinov) and
Alec Guinness in
The Card as well as the aforementioned
I Know Where I'm Going! which is a Powell and Pressburger feature film now generally regarded as a masterpiece (Clark's part was small).
In 1945, Clark was featured in the comic strip
Radio Fun, in which she was billed as "Radio's Merry Mimic".
[7]
In 1946, Clark launched 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, titled simply
Petula Clark. A second,
Pet's Parlour, followed in 1949.
In 1947 Clark met
Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson
at the Maurice Publishing Company. The two collaborated musically, and
were linked romantically over the coming decade. In 1949, Henderson
introduced Clark to
Alan A. Freeman, who, together with her father Leslie, formed
Polygon Records, for which she recorded her earliest hits.
Clark had recorded her first release that year, "Put Your Shoes On, Lucy," for
EMI. Because neither EMI nor
Decca,
for whom she also had recorded, were keen to sign her to a long-term
contract, her father, whose own theatrical ambitions had been thwarted
by his parents, teamed with Freeman to form the Polygon record label in
order to better control and facilitate her singing career.
[citation needed]
This project was financed with Clark's earnings. She scored a number of major hits in the UK during the 1950s, including "
The Little Shoemaker" (1954), "Majorca" (1955), "
Suddenly There's a Valley" (1955) and "
With All My Heart" (1956).'The Little Shoemaker' was an international hit reaching the coveted No 1 position in
Australia, giving her the first of many No 1 records in her career.
Although Clark released singles in the
United States as early as 1951 (the first was "Tell Me Truly" b/w "Song Of The Mermaid" on the Coral label),
[citation needed] it would take thirteen years before the American record-buying public would discover her.
[citation needed]
Near the end of 1955, Polygon Records was sold to Nixa Records, then part of
Pye Records, which led to the establishment of
Pye Nixa Records
(subsequently simply Pye).
This turn of events effectively signed Clark
to the Pye label in the UK, for whom she would record for the remainder
of the 1950s, throughout the 1960s, and early into the 1970s.
[citation needed]
During this period, Clark showed a keen interest for encouraging new
talent. She suggested Henderson be allowed to record his own music, and
he enjoyed 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. It was there that she met her longtime
publicist, collaborator, and her future husband, Claude Wolff. Clark was
attracted immediately, and when she was told that she would work with
him if she signed up with the Vogue label, she agreed.
[8]
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.
[citation needed]
Gradually she moved further into the continent, recording in
German,
French,
Italian and
Spanish, and establishing herself as a multi-lingual performer.
While Clark focused on her new career in France, she continued to
achieve hit records in the UK into the early 1960s, developing a
parallel career on both sides of the
Channel.
Her 1961 recording of
Sailor became her first No.1 hit in the U.K., while such follow-up recordings as
Romeo and
My Friend the Sea landed her in the British Top Ten later that year. In France,
Ya Ya Twist (a
French language cover of the
Lee Dorsey rhythm and blues song "Ya Ya" and the only successful recording of a
twist song by a female) and "Chariot" (the original version of
I Will Follow Him)
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 also were big sellers. She also at this time was made a present of '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 1964, Clark wrote the soundtrack for the French crime film
A Couteaux Tirés (aka
Daggers Drawn) and made a cameo appearance as herself in the film. Although it was only a mild success,
[citation needed] it added a new dimension — that of film composer — to her career. Additional film scores she composed include
Animato (1969),
La bande à Bebel (1966), and
Pétain (1989). Six themes from the last were released on the CD
In Her Own Write in 2007.
[citation needed]
International Fame - the "Downtown" era
By 1964, Clark's British recording career was foundering. The 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.
[citation needed] 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, which he suggested might be offered to
the Drifters.
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.
Thus "
Downtown" came into being.
[9]
Neither Clark, who was performing in
Canada when the song first received major air-play,
[10]
nor Hatch realised the impact the song would have on their respective
careers. Released in four different languages in late 1964, "Downtown"
was a success in the UK, France (in both the English and the French
versions), the
Netherlands,
Germany,
Australia,
Italy and also
Rhodesia,
Japan and
India.
During a visit to London,
Warner Bros. executive Joe Smith heard it and acquired the rights for the United States.
[citation needed][11] "Downtown" went to No. 1 on the American charts in January 1965, and three million copies were sold in America.
"Downtown" was the first of fifteen consecutive Top 40 hits Clark achieved in the United States, including "
I Know a Place", "
My Love", "
A Sign of the Times", "
I Couldn't Live Without Your Love", "
This Is My Song" (from the
Charles Chaplin film
A Countess from Hong Kong), 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 (R&R) Vocal Performance of 1965 - Female" for "I Know a Place". In 2004, her recording of "Downtown" was inducted into the
Grammy Hall of Fame.
Ad for the NBC-TV special that sparked controversy even before it aired
Clark's 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-TV
invited Clark to host her own special in the U.S., and in doing so she
inadvertently made television history. While singing a duet of "On the
Path of Glory," an anti-war 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, the show's sponsor, who feared that the moment would incur the racist bigotry of
Southern
viewers.
When he insisted that they substitute a different take, with
Clark and Belafonte standing well away from one another, 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 programme aired on 8 April 1968, with high
ratings and critical acclaim.
[12]
(To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the original 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 broadcast of the programme.
[13])
Clark later was the hostess of two more specials, another one for NBC and one for
ABC
- one which served as a pilot for a projected weekly series. Clark
declined the offer in order to please her children, who disliked living
in
Los Angeles.
[citation needed] Clark starred in the television series
This is Petula Clark, which aired from mid-1966 though early 1968.
Clark revived her film career in the late 1960s, starring in two big musical films. In
Finian's Rainbow (1968), 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. With her role, she again made history by becoming
Astaire's final on-screen dance partner.
The following year she was cast
with
Peter O'Toole in
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), a musical adaptation of the classic
James Hilton novella.
Throughout the late 1960s, Clark toured in concerts in the States, 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, where she consistently broke house attendance records.
[citation needed]
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 French composer/arranger
Michel Colombier to the States to work as her musical director and introduced him to Alpert.
[citation needed]
Colombier went on to co-write "
Purple Rain" with
Prince, composed the acclaimed pop symphony
Wings and a number of soundtracks for American films.
Richard Carpenter credited Clark with bringing him and his sister
Karen to Alpert's attention when they performed at a premiere party for Clark's 1969 film
Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
[citation needed]
