Sally "Petula" Clark CBE (born 15 November 1932) 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" (a UK number one), "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" (US number one), "I Know a Place", "My Love" (US number one), "A Sign of the Times", "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love", "Who Am I", "Colour My World", "This Is My Song" (by Charlie Chaplin; a UK number one), "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.
Petula Clark was born Sally Clark on 15 November 1932 in Ewell, Surrey, England to Doris (née Phillips) 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.
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 (directed by Peter Ustinov) and Alec Guinness in The Card.
In 1945, Clark 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" (1954), "Majorca" (1955), "Suddenly There's a Valley" (1955) and "With All My Heart" (1956). "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 (subsequently simply Pye). 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.
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" (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 woman) 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 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.