"Downtown" Girl Turns 80

Petula Clark is still going "Downtown" at 80. Her birthday was last week, so this is a birthday celebration for the girl who said, "You'll never grow old if you look to the rainbow." George Burns said at 95, "We can't help getting older, but we don't have to get old." Petula Clark hasn't gotten old. She has grown as an artist and performer, developing her talents as she has gotten older. And still does.

Petula Sally Olwen Clark was born Tuesday, November 15th, 1932 in Epsom, Surrey, England to her English father Leslie Norman Clark and her Welsh mother Doris Phillips Clark, making Petula half-Welsh. She's very proud of her heritage. As Petula explains on her 2003 Paris Olympia DVD, "The Welsh sing. Like the Italians, they sing all the time. When I was five or six years old, I just sang for pleasure." She also sang in the chapel choir.

In October 1942, she had an uncle in the war she wanted to sing to. A BBC radio show which offered kids with soldier relatives that chance turned out to be her broadcasting debut with "Mighty Lak' a Rose". Although other kids sang on that BBC Radio show that night, she was noticed, both for her previous performance to the jittery theater audience immediately after an air raid, as well as the radio performance itself. What followed were numerous BBC Radio performances where Petula sang to the troops, became the British Army mascot and youngest singing sweetheart, and Britain's Shirley Temple.

Then came twenty-five British films as strictly an actress, giving Petula two parallel careers which have occasionally intersected ever since, especially in movies "Finian's Rainbow" and "Goodbye Mr, Chips", and her later theater work in "Sunset Boulevard" and "Blood Brothers". Among her early British films were a series of Huggett Family films based on a popular British radio series. In the late 1940s, she also hosted two BBC-TV series, "Petula Clark", then "Pet's Parlour". The 1950s began her recording career with major UK hits like "With All My Heart", "Majorica", the Gogi Grant tune she covered "Suddenly There's A Valley", and Clark's first international hit "The Littlest Shoemaker" (which topped the charts in Australia in 1954).

The late 1950s began her singing career in France, thanks to her success at the Olympia in Paris, then her new collaborator at Vogue Records, Claude Wolff, who also became her publicist and future husband. While performing and recording as a French chanteuse, Petula also maintained her popularity in England with hits like "Sailor", "Chariot", and "Ya Ya Twist" into the 1960s.

In 1964 Tony Hatch, a young songwriter who had worked with her on Pye Records in the UK as well as Vogue Records in France, played her an incomplete song with no words except the title on his piano. She liked the melody immediately, and told him to finish the lyrics-if they were as good she wanted to record it. The result became her biggest hit, and "Downtown" was the start of a string of Tony Hatch written international hit songs and her American career, which continues today. She starred with Fred Astaire in "Finian's Rainbow"(1968), her first film role in nearly two decades. Always discovering new talent, she was instrumental in the launch of Herb Albert's A&M record label. Clark also introduced French composer Michel Colomber and the then unknown Richard and Karen Carpenter to Herb Albert. 1968 was also the year she took a moral stand in her TV special with Harry Belafonte, garnering high ratings and acclaim for it. She returned to England and starred opposite Peter O'Toole in "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" in 1969.

Petula Clark kept recording, charting, and touring in the 1970s, but scaled back her career to raise her young family. Her last movie was the 1980 British film, "Never Never Land". Her last TV acting role was as Mme. Millian in the 1981 French TV mini-series "Sans Famille".

In the 1980s, her children, now older, urged her to return to legitimate theater, which she had last done in 1954's "The Constant Nymph". Petula won rave reviews as Maria von Trapp in "The Sound of Music" in London's West End in 1981, then followed up with her 1983 title role in George Bernard Shaw's "Candida". She composed the score of "Someone Like You", in which she also acted, in 1989. In 1993 Petula made her Broadway debut in "Blood Brothers". She starred as Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Sunset Boulevard" from 1995 to 2000, with over 2500 performances, the most for any actress in that role.

Queen Elizabeth II made Petula Clark a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, just one step below Damehood, in 1998.

But she hasn't rested on her laurels. She's kept touring all over the world. In 2001, a Virginia Beach, Virginia concert was taped for her "Sign of the Times" PBS-TV special. Her 2003 concert at the Olympia in Paris was a huge success and released as a CD and DVD in 2004. During 2005 and 2006, Clark performed engagements with Andy Williams in his Moon River Theatre in Branson, Missouri. 2006 also saw her singing debut in Iceland. Petula did "Coming Home" a 2007 BBC Wales TV show about her Welsh family history. She performed in Quincy Jones' 75th birthday celebration at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland on Monday, July 14th, 2008 with Paulo Nutini on "Goin' To Chicago Blues". Later that year, Petula Clark made her singing debut in the Philippines.

Petula Clark sang two concerts in Dayton, Ohio in March 2009. I attended the second one and met her after the show. In 2010 she continued touring, appeared on French TV on "Vivement Dimanche", and released a triple album titled "Une Baladeine" with ten new tracks, plus "SOS Mozart" written by Gilbert Becaud and Pierre Delanoe. The Saw Doctors put out their own version of "Downtown", with Clark appearing in the video, in 2011. She was also on Italian TV and sang at a Parisian music hall, Casino de Paris, that year. She worked in New York City in early 2012. She recorded, released, and promoted a French album in Paris with her old friend Charles Aznavour, who still looks and sings well at 88. She toured Australia, then returned to London to do an English language album to be released in February 2013.

And as I post this, Petula Clark is scheduled to sing a concert next Friday at the Kursall Ostende in Ostend, Belgium.

Don't Forget The Third Parties When You Vote!

When you vote, if you find that you can't stomach either of the top two candidates for the U.S. presidency, Republican nor Democratic, take a moment to consider the top third party candidates. But who are they?

Dr. Jill Stein is running on the Green Party ticket. Endorsed by Noam Chomsky and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges, Stein promises a Green New Deal for Americans and an Economic Bill of Rights, transitioning into a sustainable 21st century green economy while reforming the financial sectors. She also plans to strengthen our democracy by replacing the Electoral College with direct popular vote, extending the vote to ex-felons, and making Election Day a national holiday, enabling all to vote.

Gary Johnson, running for the Libertarian Party, promises to balance the Federal Budget by cutting Federal spending enough to eliminate deficit spending, replace taxes on income, capital gains, and businesses with a national consumption tax, which would create millions of new jobs. Johnson also wants to scale back federal involvement in the nation's schools, in Medicare, in health care by providing block grants to the states, and in regulations in managing the environment, leaving all these functions to the states and the marketplace. He also supports finance reform.

Virgil Goode, presidential candidate for the Constitution Party, promises a balanced budget in the next fiscal year. Goode also calls for totally ending illegal immigration, reducing legal immigration, and a moratorium for green card admissions until the economy recovers. His campaign has refused any PAC donations and limited individual donations to two hundred dollars per person.

Richard Duncan, the Independent Party presidential candidate, has a national building plan for America-The Duncan Plan-also known as the Federal Jobs and Economic Boost Act, proposes rehabilitation projects for American cities, and plans to assure equal educational opportunities for all children. Duncan also favors a national health care program for the middle class.

Rocky Anderson is running on the Justice Party platform. This new party believes the two party system has failed us and offers an end to corporate funding of political parties, the building of a green technology economy and infrastructure, environmental justice, and affordable universal health care through Medicare, stricter financial reform, support of women's rights, and support of whistle blowers.

There are other parties. But I'll stop here. These all have websites. So study them carefully before you vote.