Petula Clark: A legend in her own time

After over 60 years in show business, legendary British singer Petula Clark is finally making her first appearance in Manila and Filipino fans of different generations are excitedly awaiting her arrival.

Clark, who started her showbiz career as a child performer at age seven, is booked for two shows — tonight at Manila Hotel and tomorrow, Sept. 13 at the Araneta Coliseum.

What’s remarkable about Clark is her enduring popularity. She rose to global fame in the ’60s, riding the wave of the British Invasion and rivaling other solo female stars like Lulu, Dusty Springfield, Sandie Shaw, Marianne Faithfull, Cilla Black, Mary Hopkin and Shirley Bassey on her side of the Atlantic. But while the others slowly faded into the sunset, Clark has managed to stay active on stage, on film and in the highly-competitive recording circuit.

Now at 75, Clark is as captivating as ever, treating audiences all over the world with her wonderful songs which she has sold over 30 million copies. Her voice quality has remained the same through the years. No British female singer has been awarded more gold discs and her list of accomplishments is a testament to an incredible professional career as singer, actress and composer.

In Manila, Clark will bring back fond memories of Downtown, This Is My Song, I Know A Place, I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love, I Don’t Know How To Love Him and Don’t Sleep In The Subway — her biggest Philippine hits.

Clark’s parents introduced her to showbiz at an early age. Her mother, a Welsh soprano, taught her how to sing. At seven, Clark began her stage career. At nine, she started her broadcasting career. At 11, she hosted her own radio war-time program, It’s All Yours and became known as “The Forces Girl,” inspiring troops with over 500 shows. At 12, she made her film debut on Medal for the General. At 17, she recorded her first single, Put Your Shoes On Lucy.

But not too many fans know that as a little girl, Clark’s first pay for singing was in the form of a bag of candy. That was when she sang with the Bentalls resident band in the entrance of the Surrey department store as shoppers walked in. It was her father who encouraged her to make a career out of singing and with her mother’s lessons, she was on the right track from the start.

Clark’s first award was for Most Outstanding Artist on UK TV in 1950 (at 18), mainly in recognition of her work as host of the popular Sunday afternoon BBC show Pet’s Parlour, which ran for three years.

In 1954, Clark figured in a car accident on the way to record The Little Shoemaker in London. She was still partly in shock when she reached the studio but had to sing through it. The incredible thing was the children’s song reached No. 7 in the UK charts.

In 1959, Clark ventured to Paris for a recording and met the Vogue label’s PR representative Claude Wolff. In June 1961, Wolff and Clark married. Their first of three children, Barbara, was born late that year. Their other children are Kate and Patrick.

With the UK market stuck to her stereotype sweet adolescent image, Clark became a household name in France and Germany where she recorded million sellers in their local language. Then came the big break. Tony Hatch, who took over from Alan Freeman as Clark’s producer in 1962 on the Pye label, offered his song Downtown, which he originally wrote for The Drifters.

In 1964, Clark finished Downtown in only two studio takes and the record zoomed to No. 2 in the UK hit parade, failing to dislodge The Beatles’ I Feel Fine at the top. It was the song that brought Clark back to the UK mainstream. In the US, Downtown shot up to No. 1, sold over a million records and installed Clark as the first British female singer to top the charts since Vera Lynn in 1952.

Downtown took Clark to The Ed Sullivan Show (where she appeared in 10 episodes) and won the Best Rock and Roll Recording of 1964 at the seventh annual Grammy Awards. Her follow-up single, I Know A Place reached No. 3 in the US charts. Clark’s back-to-back top three hits made her the first female vocalist ever to do it in history. Cyndi Lauper duplicated the feat in 1984.

In 1965, Clark’s growing popularityled to an offer to co-star with Elvis Presley in the movie Paradise Hawaiian Style. She declined the invitation.

In 1966, Clark recorded My Love but didn’t like it and tried to stop its release. Her producers, however, went on to market the record and to Clark’s surprise, it went to No. 1 in the US charts and sold over a million copies. That year, she was cited for Best Contemporary Vocal Performance by a female at the eighth annual Grammy Awards and made her Las Vegas cabaret debut with Woody Allen.

In 1967, Clark’s This Is My Song, which her husband produced, reached No. 1 in the UK charts and sold over 500,000 copies. The song was written by Charlie Chaplin for the Sophia Loren-Marlon Brando movie Countess from Hong Kong. She performed that year before Princess Margaret at the London Palladium and US President Lyndon Johnson at the White House Press Correspondents dinner.

In 1968, Clark revived her movie career. As a child actress, she appeared in over 20 films. At 35, Clark was Sharon McLonergan in Francis Ford Coppola’s production of the musical Finian’s Rainbow with Fred Astaire and Tommy Steele. She was invited to portray the role by Quincy Jones, head of Warner Brothers music department. Coincidentally, Clark was involved in a racial controversy during the taping of her NBC TV special Petula, where she touched the arm of black guest Harry Belafonte. A program sponsor wanted the sequence edited out in deference to the US southern audience but Clark stood her ground. The show eventually aired in its entirety.

The next year, she starred with Peter O’Toole in Goodbye Mr. Chips, a remake of the 1939 film with Robert Donat and Greer Garson.

In 1981, Clark revived another chapter in her showbiz career. She was Maria in the London stage production of A Sound of Music which ran for 14 months. Clark went on to do more stage shows, including George Bernard Shaw’s Candida, Someone Like You (where she wrote the music) on the West End, Blood Brothers on Broadway and lately, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard as Norma Desmond in 2000.

In 2003, Downtown was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It remains Clark’s most outstanding hit of her 15 top four US chart breakers.

Clark, who sometimes uses the pseudonym Al Grant to write songs, has enjoyed a long showbiz career that refuses to fade away because the fans won’t allow it. The Downtown girl is a legend in her own time and in another first of a storybook life, makes her Philippine debut this week. You can’t afford to miss watching one of the greatest performers in music history — it’s a chance of a lifetime.