Let’s make it a Petula Clark triple post for today. From an appearance on the American TV show The Hollywood Palace, she sings “This Is My Song.”
[flv:/Video/2008/APR/PetHollywoodBowl.flv 440 330]
Thirty five years later Petula did what I feel is an ever better rendition of the same song. Be sure to check out the other Petula clips that are linked in the YouTube menu.
Yeah, it does look like a pile of oldies at the Hollywood Palace JeanieBeanie, but I guess Doug is right. In the sixties you were old at 60. I’m supposing that the Hollywood Palace was pretty posh and that Petula’s teen audience might not have been able to get in there?
One of the things that always strikes me when I see Petula, either on stage or off it, is her huge energy, and vitality. Not only does she not look or sound anything remotely like her age, but she doesn’t move like it either. She struts around on stage for over two hours on dangerously high heels, she dances a bit, moves with the music. Later when you see her in the bar, she walks like a young woman, sits like a young woman, and stands up like a young woman…. Of course close up there are a few wrinkles but, it’ll be a long time before Petula is old.
The first version of this song I posted wasn’t very long ago, at this link.
While jeanie beanie is referring to the audience in the 1st clip, I believe Dave is referring to the 2nd clip. That’s what happens when you post two versions of the same song! As you opine, the second version is as good – or even better than the 1st!
The show was The Hollywood Palace, so I’ll assume that’s an American audience. But, yes, back in those days those who didn’t drop dead at 65 or younger were, well, uniformly old! Such is not the case today. It’s now possible to be a “young 70” and that’s a good thing.
She just gets better.
I’m guessing, looking at the titles, that that was German TV, and that the fireworks at the end suggest that it might have been midnight on New Year’s Eve, and that, because all the rest of the cast were coming onstage, that was the end of the show.
Check out that audience in the first clip! Looks like a bunch of old pensioners from the East End! Dave or Brian, can you weigh in? Talk about hatchet faces! Wait, was that Doug sitting there, in the first row, a time traveler, perhaps? HA! You play the second tape, and it’s like NO TIME HAS PASSED AT ALL. Again, I ask you, can’t this woman take a bad picture. Al lot of us age poorly (I’m one of them!) Many age beautifully, for example:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WAlfNno-QuQ
Sorry about the quality. I just saw this on TV yesterday. It’s fairly new. That’s Joanne Woodward, at 77. Our beautiful mother, also named Joanne, and also an actress at one point, passed away at 77, and was only a shadow of her former self. Woodward is vibrant, strong and healthy here.