Photo by Kevin Merrill

For those of you who haven't seen the film or the play Sunset Boulevard, it recounts the story of Norma Desmond, an aging silent-film actress whose star has faded, and Joe Gillis, a rash young handsome screenwriter who's in dire need of some good luck. His meeting with Norma brings him work; she has written a script, and he is hired to help her rework and edit it. But the endless hours of more than just working together also bring him unexpected distress: After a New Year's party at which Joe is the only guest, Norma expresses her undying love. Joe's feelings are far from mutual.

Desertions, suicide attempts, apologies, and much more help bring the play to its conclusion with Norma delivering the famous line: "And now, Mr. DeMille, I am ready for my close-up." To see what leads up to that line, you'll have to either rent the film or see the play, which makes its Houston debut on Dec. 22 [1998], starring Petula Clark as Norma Desmond.

Clark follows in the footsteps of two other icons. Gloria Swanson, who starred as Norma in the 1950 film, was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress; and Glenn Close, who created the role of Norma on Broadway, won a Tony Award as Best Actress in a musical. Petula Clark, however, is no stranger to Norma Desmond. Not that Clark is also a fading film star. FAR FROM IT. At 66, Clark is still going strong. In 1995 Andrew Lloyd Webber persuaded her to take the role of Norma Desmond in the English production of Sunset Boulevard. She stayed with it from Sept. 1995 to April 5, 1997. At the final curtain, Clark received one of the greatest standing ovations ever seen in London's West End.

Now, for those of you who haven't heard of Petula Clark, you should know that she has more gold discs to her credit than any other British artist and total world record sales well in excess of 30 million. Her popularity started in the States with her '60s hit "Downtown," and she continued with a string of top-ten hits. She had been acting since she was eight years old, and in the late '60s, she starred with Fred Astaire in the musical Finian's Rainbow and with Peter O'Toole in Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

Petula Clark in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)

Following successful international concert tours, in the early '80s Clark starred as Maria Von Trapp in the smash hit revival of The The Sound of Music. On opening night, the real Maria Von Trapp paid Clark an unforgettable compliment: "If I never see The Sound of Music again, this is the way I want to remember it—and I want to remember Petula's performance as the greatest performance of Maria."

In the early '90s Clark made a triumphant return to the stage in the Broadway production of Blood Brothers, with David and Shaun Cassidy. She played the role of Mrs. Johnston for a full year on Broadway, followed by a year-long tour across the country.

Now, after starring in the successful English production of Sunset Boulevard, Clark is ready for her American close-up.

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Blase DiStefano: How are you doing?
Petula Clark [in her charming English accent]: I'm OK. I'm just sort of recuperating from one of those funny sort of 24-hour flu-typie things. I wasn't able to rehearse at all yesterday. I'm feeling better now though. I'll be going in today.

What happens when you get sick and the show is in full swing?
You hope there's some good doctors in town.

[Laughs]
And you fight your way through it. I have an understudy, of course, and they rehearsed with her yesterday. So it was a good opportunity for her to really have a go at the role.

That's good. First of all, happy belated birthday [Nov. 15].
[Laughs] Thank you.

Where were you born?
I was born in England, a place called Epsom. That's where we have our Epsom Darby, or Derby, as you call it. It's a very, very horsey kind of place.

Do you enjoy riding horses?
I do actually, yes. I haven't ridden for some time but...

But you did a lot back then.
Yeah.

Did you own any horses?
Not until we were in France. When I moved to France, we had some racehorses, but we don't have them anymore.

What did your parents do?
Oh, my parents were very sort of lower middle class, I think you'd call us. My mother and father were both nurses, and then my father was in the army. My mother was Welsh and had a very beautiful voice.

Did she?
Well, the Welsh are a bit like the Italians—they'll sing at the drop of a hat. And they sing very well, fortunately.

[Laughs]
It was my father who encouraged me, because he had always wanted to be an actor. He was a very handsome man and had never been allowed to go in this business when he was a child or when he was a young man, so when he heard his little daughter singing around the house—'cause I was always singing—he decided I had some talent and should be encouraged. Which is easier said than done if you don't have any money and you don't have any influence.

How did it finally get started then? When was your first professional appearance?
Professional? I used to sing in school concerts and chapel concerts in Wales and things like that. Professional, meaning paid?
[Both laugh]

Yeah, I guess.
I was paid with a can of toffees, actually. Candy. That was my first pay. I appreciated it very much.

That's so sweet. Do you remember about what age?
I was eight. That I do remember.

Basically, you were a hit in England and in Europe. So what started your popularity here in the States?
It happened with a record. We recorded "Downtown" in England. It became a hit in England, and it was picked up by Warner Bros. and became a huge hit over here.

Yeah, it was. Huge. Who wrote that, by the way?
Tony Hatch.

Did he write a lot of stuff for you?
Oh yes. He wrote "I Know a Place," "Don't Sleep in the Subway," "Couldn't Live Without Your Love."... He wrote a whole string of things for me.

Then with the revival of The Sound of Music in 1981, you received a rather nice compliment from the original Maria Von Trapp. Did you actually get to meet her?
Yes I did.

What was that like?
She was very nice. She was very eccentric.

Oh, really?
Oh, yes. Yes, she really was. She said [Clark uses an Austrian accent], "You know, darling, I was never going to be a nun." I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "I was crazy. I was like a mad, wild thing." And she said, "Do you think you could play her barefoot?"

[Laughs]
I said, "Well, I don't know." She said, "I was barefoot most of the time. I used to run around the mountains like a mountain goat. There was no way I was ever going to be a nun." And she was very eccentric and very funny and very bizarre, I should say.

How interesting.
Yeah, she was interesting. I liked her. She was quite formidable. I think a lot of people were a bit scared of her. She was obviously the driving force in that family.

So, from Maria Von Trapp to Charlie Chaplan. Did he actually write "This Is My Song" for you?
I don't know if he did write it for me, quite honestly. I mean, there are so many stories about that, and I never really got it out of him. By the time I met him, he was getting a bit ga-ga by then. But I liked him, and we got on quite well. He used to live quite close to where we were living at the time in Geneva, and he had this lovely mansion on the other side of the lake. He was a charming host. I would go over there, and he would insist on me playing piano for him while he sang and danced around his living room. That was a pretty weird sight, I tell you. I have some photographs of that, but I'm not going to show you. [Both laugh]

How did you come to be the one to sing it?
It was sent to me by the publisher who was beginning to get a little confused about it himself. I don't know if this is true, it quite possibly is true—Charlie was living more or less in exile in Switzerland and was not really in contact with very much. Rumor has it he wrote it actually for Al Jolson, and of course people would keep telling him, "Al Jolson is dead." He wouldn't believe it, he just wouldn't believe it. Somebody had to send him a photograph of Al Jolson's tomb before he would believe it.

[Laughs]
And the publisher said, "Well, I think this would sound beautiful sung by Petula Clark." He said, "Well, OK, see if she wants to sing it." They chased me all over the country, because I was touring in America at the time, and they had to find me to send this wretched tape, and I have to say that when I received it, I didn't like it at all.

Really? [Laughs.]
Yeah. I really had to be talked into singing this. [Both laugh] So there was a bit of a who-ha about this song altogether. And of course it was a huge hit in French, Italian, and German. And eventually I recorded it in English.

Are you aware "This Is My Song," along with "Happy Heart," were used in a recent movie Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss?
I am. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I've heard about it. And I've heard the tracks, which I think were very well done. They were well mixed. The remix was very good, very subtle, I thought.

If it had been up to you, would you have given permission for the use of your songs, considering it's a gay film?
Yes, yes, of course.

Are you aware of your gay fans?
I am, yes, and I'm delighted. It's lovely.

I'm one of them, just to let you know.
[Laughs] Thank you.

What are your views on gay marriage?
I think if two people really love each other, I don't see why not. Love is such a rare and wonderful thing, that if you find it, it should be cherished. I'm not saying necessarily that marriage is the best way to do that, but I've seen some very, very happy gay couples that have been together for years and years.

And if they had the chance to be married, why not?
Absolutely. But I don't think marriage is the answer to everything by any means. I think being married is very difficult indeed.

You've been married like 30...
Over 30 years.

That's nice.
Yes it is, but I can't pretend that it's been great. Well, it has, but we live very different lives now, my husband and I. He's not with me at the moment, but he'll be with me for Thanksgiving. He doesn't travel with me all the time—he has his life and I have mine. It's very difficult to talk about one's relationships to perfect strangers.

I didn't mean to...
I know you didn't.

I understand, because relationships are difficult.
Yes, they are.

If you do things separate from each other...
Exactly, it keeps it fresh.

Yes. So you're going to be with your husband for Thanksgiving, and you're going to be here in Houston for Christmas.
Yes, I am.

So what are you going to be doing for Christmas?
I won't have anyone. Isn't that sad?

Oh, no.
Our home is in Geneva in Switzerland, and we have a chalet in the mountains in France, which is just about three quarters of an hour from Geneva. That's sort of like the traditional place for Christmas—the skiing and snow and all the rest of it.

You certainly won't get that here.
No. So they're all going to be up there.

And you're going to be here.
I'm going to be in Houston. But I will be with my new family—the Sunset Boulevard family. And they're wonderful. We're a family already.

How long have you been rehearsing?
We rehearsed three weeks in New York, and we're up here [Westpoint] for 10 days.

How long will you be there?
Well, we actually do our first performance on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. That's why it was important for me to get over this thing, whatever it was. So I'll be working hard today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and then we have Thanksgiving Day off, and then we do our first performance on Friday.

So what's after Westpoint? Is Houston next?
No, no, no. The show actually opens in Pittsburgh on the first of December.

So how long will you be in Pittsburgh?
Just a week, and then we go to Richmond, Virginia. I think we go to Columbus after that, and then we go to Houston.

My goodness.
I know, I know. People have said to me, "You must be mad to go out on the road."

And what do you say, because I was about to say the same thing.
I love it, I absolutely love it. Touring in America is very exciting for me. I never did a proper tour of the States way back in the '60s. They were like one-night stands. It was all a bit of a blur. I did a tour with Blood Brothers, which is another musical a few years back and was great fun, but I'll be going to places like Houston.

So you haven't been to Houston?
I may have been there in the '60s. [Both laugh] People have come up to see me and said, "Oh, it's so good to have you back, Miss Clark," and I say, "Back? Was I here?" [Both laugh]

It was one of those one-night stands.
It was one of those one-night stands, yeah.

Now didn't you do Sunset Boulevard in England for about a year?
I did.

Is it a lot different than this show? Did you have to work as hard?
In a funny way, I have to work harder because I'm having to unlearn everything I knew about the old show. But don't get me wrong—this is basically the same show. It's the same music, the same dialogue, the same costumes. But that's where it ends—it's a different take on it. I think it's wonderful. I just think it's great. It's far more into the emotion and into the feelings of these people, and I think we feel a lot more about them. Otherwise, it's just a story about a monstrous woman and a gigolo, and it's not very interesting. Have you seen it before?

No, I only saw the film. That's one reason I'm really looking forward to it. And I think a lot of other people are, too.
Good.

If you had a choice of being called an icon or a diva, which would you prefer?
[Laughs] I don't feel like any of that. I feel like a bag woman at the moment.

[Laughs]
I have a towel wrapped around my throat... No, no, no, I don't go into that kind of stuff at all.

It does present a rather humorous view from my standpoint—I'm talking about an icon or a diva who is talking about having a towel wrapped around her throat.
[Both laugh] And I'm rubbing Vicks stuff on my chest. No, no, no. Keep your illusions, my dear.

[Laughs] OK, I certainly will. But I have no illusions about your beautiful voice, which I'm looking forward to hearing on your new CD. When did you record it?
Thank you. I did it in Los Angeles. I managed to squeeze it in between some dates in Atlantic City and my UK tour, which was just before I came over here. So it was recorded rather quickly.

It's got 19 titles, right?
Yeah. It's got some new songs on it and a lot of show things on it, and by the time we get to Houston, I think we will also have three songs from Sunset Boulevard. And they are lovely recordings. We weren't able to have them on the original CD, but they should be out by then.

I truly appreciate your time. I know you don't want to hear this, but you are a goddess.
[Laughs] Thank you. You made my day.

And you've made mine.
We're both happy.

Yes, and are you ready for your close-up?
I am. Yes, I am.

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