Petula Knows Where She’s Going!

Petula Clark is going to Canada in September. She’s going to talk about the film “I Know Where I’m Going!” in which she appeared as a girl of twelve, as seen in this video clip that I first featured over two years ago.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/JAN07/IKnowWhereImGoing.flv 400 300]

In case the article at the link above loads too slowly, or if it disappears, you’ll find the text below. The website for the event is at this link. What fun!

Here’s something else that’s fun. Petula singing “Downtown” in German. I admit to having swiped this from the Keep the Coffee Coming blog.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JUN/DowntownGerman.mp3]

Petula Clark to take part in film screening
Posted By BILL HENRY, SUN TIMES STAFF

Petula Clark is coming to Wiarton in September.

The legendary British pop songstress won’t be singing. Instead, she’ll help screen and talk about her role at age 13 in the 1946 romance “I Know Where I’m Going.”

The movie, which is set in Tobermory, Scotland, was launched in North America April 29, 1946 at Bruce Peninsula’s Tobermory.

Wiarton resident Paul Kastner was 19 then and was among the 900 people who doubled the tiny fishing village’s population for the unusual media event.

Tobermory was an isolated fishing village then, still without electricity, and served by bumpy washboard gravel roads, Kastner said yesterday.

Many of the fewer than 500 people who lived there were just back from the Second World War.

When a Toronto publicist pitched the plan to premier the new film at the tip of the Bruce, the Bruce Peninsula Tourist Association got behind it.

Residents spruced up their boats. Toronto politicians, photographers and film camera operators, newspaper and radio reporters, film industry people, provincial tourism officials all piled on a bus to Tobermory. There was even a plan to rename Doctor Island near Tobermory to Kiloran Island to match the Scottish Island in the film.

Kastner had forgotten about the premier until a year or so ago when he read that “I Know Where I’m Going” was revived and released on DVD.

Recalling all the pomp of six decades ago, Kastner thought of reviving the film in Tobermory or Wiarton as a fund raising event.

“I had in mind originally to replicate all of it,” he said.

It was an “historic moment in Canadian entertainment history” that should not be forgotten, Kastner said.

He thought at first about a revival in Tobermory, where the movie was screened recently by a local group. But his plans to include Clark and make it a major event were more appropriate for the larger Wiarton community, Kastner said.

Clark lives now in Geneva, Switzerland. She was a British child film and stage star by age 11, and “I Know Where I’m Going” was her fourth film. The singer later came to international prominence in the 1960s with such pop hits as “Downtown” and “Don’t Sleep in The Subway”.

Clark is to appear at 7 p.m. Sept. 18 at the 400-seat Peninsula Shores Performing Arts Centre. She will talk about making the movie, its late stars, her wartime role as a child entertainer performing to 200 Allied Forces camps in Britain, her 40 some movies, and subsequent singing career with more than 60 million records sold worldwide. In January, she released a new DVD of love songs.

I Know Where I’m Going starred Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey. Film critic Barry Norman has listed it among the all time top 100 movies.

Novelist Raymond Chandler said “I’ve never seen a picture which smelled of the wind and rain in quite this way nor one which so beautifully exploited the kind of scenery people actually live with, rather than the kind which is commercialized as a show place.”

Filmmaker Martin Scorsese once said he had “reached the point of thinking there were no more masterpieces to discover, until I sawI Know Where I’m Going.”

The movie will be shown at 8:30 p. m. after Clark speaks.

Kastner said she waived her fee and money raised will go to Miracle Place — Wiarton, the Bruce Peninsula’s first affordable rental apartment housing. Construction on that project is expected to begin next fall, and details of the campaign to raise $380,000 are to be announced soon.

Tickets to see Clark and “I Know Where I’m Going” are to go on sale next week at $20, Kastner said, once the website www.petulaclarkinwiarton.com goes online.