Petula Clark - Career Beginnings

Career Beginnings

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 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. 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.

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, 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".

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 would collaborate musically, at times linked romantically, over the coming decade. In 1949, Henderson introduced Clark to Alan A. Freeman, who, together with her father Leslie, formed the 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.. 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), it would take thirteen years before the American record-buying public would discover her.

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.

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.