Downtown (Petula Clark Song) - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• In a Season 1 episode of Will & Grace, Will (Erick McCormack) meets Val (Molly Shannon) in an elevator when she completes the song after he begins humming it.
• In the 1999 movie Girl, Interrupted, Susanna (Winona Ryder) and Lisa (Angelina Jolie), sing the song together after Polly (Elisabeth Moss) is confined in a room alone; the original version is played during the closing credits.
• The song is used as the opening number to Priscilla Queen of the Desert – the Musical, a stage musical based on the 1994 movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
• In the Season 3 premiere episode of Lost, "A Tale of Two Cities", Elizabeth Mitchell's character Juliet Burke had this song playing in her home in the opening scene. The song was heard again in a flashback sequence in the season 3 episode "One of Us".
• The song also was used in episode 272 ("Uncle Charley's Aunt") of the television series My Three Sons. Originally aired on 17 February 1968, the episode had Tina Cole as Katie singing the popular song with the rest of the Douglas family. They then decide to perform the song at Uncle Charley's local lodge when he's forced to put together a matinee performance, but all but one member of the family ends up not being able to attend.
• In the 1991 movie Flight of the Intruder, starring Willem Dafoe and Brad Johnson, Defoe and Johnson sing it together in an A-6 Intruder cockpit on their way back from a prohibited bombing run on a Hanoi SAM missile depot. (see the entry for Operation Rolling Thunder below)
• The song is briefly mentioned in the movie Short Circuit 2, as part of a plot device using the names of songs as clues. The Downtown they refer to is Downtown New York.
• In 1987, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (later to become better known as The KLF) sampled large chunks of "Downtown" to make their new single "Down Town".
• The pop-punk band Green Day use the melody of "Downtown" for their song "Waiting", on their 2000 album Warning.
• The song was sung by Lucille Bluth to General Anderson to get her son Buster out of military service in the Arrested Development episode "Switch Hitter".
• The song was heard on the soundtrack of the 1993 film Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. The classical pianist considered Petula Clark the best female vocalist of his generation and published several essays praising her talent and achievements.
• In the 1993 episode of The Simpsons entitled "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", the Be Sharps hold an audition to replace Chief Wiggum. Groundskeeper Willie performs the song in his audition and, with his Scottish accent, pronounces the title as "Doontoon".
• The song was used to introduce a feature on Children's BBC where viewers could send in pictures of themselves in their town (hence "Downtown") to presenter Phillip Schofield.
• The French language version of the song was used in the Canadian movie waydowntown.
• The song was used during the opening scenes of Jaws 2 in 1978.
• Amanda Price sings it to Elizabeth Bennet's peers in Lost in Austen which sees a modern-day Londoner trapped inside Jane Austen's fictional world of Pride and Prejudice. This scene is deleted from some DVD and broadcast versions of the show.
• The song was used in an episode of Coronation Street for the episode where Liam Connor is murdered. This was aired on 16 October 2008
• Rick Moranis performs a jazz version of the song as lounge singer Tom Monroe on SCTV. The song is arranged to include Petula Clark's other hits, "Don't Sleep in the Subway," "A Sign of the Times" and "I Know a Place".
• A Mad Men character sings a cappella an improvised version of the song to mock a coworker and her lesbian girlfriend (Season 4).
• In Australia, Coles Supermarkets used a version of the song sung by staff members and customers, altering the lyrics to reflect reduced prices throughout the store in 2011.
• In Seinfeld, George Costanza erroneously believes his boss is sending him a crypted message about an assignment through the lyrics in the song.
• In the 1985 St. Elsewhere episode "Remembrance of Things Past" Petula Clark's recording of "Downtown" can be heard in the background during a scene flashing back to 1965, in which Dr. Westphall meets Nurse Rosenthal for the first time; as is frequently the case when pop music is used in episodic television, Clark's recording was cut from the version of that appears in syndication (it was replaced by generic background music), presumably due to copyright issues.