Singing with engaging innocence and natural charm, Petula Clark revealed her vocal talent early as a child star entertaining the troops on BBC radio broadcasts in the 1940s, becoming known as Britain's answer to Shirley Temple. Aged 12 in 1944 she sang at London's Royal Albert Hall and was spotted by movie director Maurice Elvey, who cast her in the war movie Medal For The General, leading to other film roles in I Know Where I'm Going, London Town and Here Come The Huggetts. She made her first record Put Your Shoes On Lucy in 1949 and had a succession of 1950s hits with The Little Shoemaker, Suddenly There's A Valley and With All My Heart. Greater fame awaited in the 1960s, when she achieved a UK Number 1 with Sailor, but even that was eclipsed when she teamed up with songwriter Tony Hatch in 1964 to record the irresistibly poppy Downtown; a Number 1 hit all over the world, selling 3 million in the US alone. Other major hits - I Know A Place, My Love, I Couldn't Live Without Your Love, Don't Sleep In The Subway and This Is My Song - followed before she returned to movies with Finian's Rainbow and Goodbye Mr Chips. There were more hits in the 1970s but in the 1980s she concentrated on stage musicals, starring as Maria Von Trapp in The Sound Of Music in London.
