The Films of Petula Clark
Never Never Land
(Second Star to the Right)


Released 1980 - Artemis Productions
Drama 95 minutes


SYNOPSIS:
An unhappy little girl from a broken home goes to live with her mother's sister, Aunt Bee (Petula.) Feeling alone and tormented by her two older cousins, she finds solace in the Peter Pan myth and acts out her fantasy by running away from home with her youngest cousin and setting up a "Wendy home" for other lost children in an abandonned house in the neighborhood.


CAST:

Edith Forbes
Aunt Bea
Zena
Jim
Jennie

.....Cathleen Nesbitt
.....Petula Clark
.....Anne Seymour
.....John Castle
.....Heather Miller
FILM NOTES:
  • Filmed at EMI's Elstree Studios
  • Directed by Paul Annett
  • Produced by Diane Baker
  • Petula sings the film title track "Fly Away," which was written by Jane McNealy & Alice Khuna and can be found on Petula's Downtown to Sunset Boulevard CD.
  • This film was never properly distributed, and received its first, and only, real audience while airing on an American cable station in the early 80s. Unfortunately, although broadcast a number of times, cable was still in its infancy and thus the film reached only a very limited audience.

Producer Diane Baker and Petula in Cannes for the screening of "Never Never Land" at the Cannes Film Festival.


REVIEW:
  •      Never Never Land plots the story of a seven-year-old girl who, after being abandoned by her parents, rejected by her cousins and left in the care of her aunt, flees from all the grim reality of her life to a fantasy world. The hero of the little girl's dream world is none other than Peter Pan himself. Fueled by an emotional and pychological need for escape, the little girl starts writing real letters to Peter Pan! The results make for a thoroughly charming and intelligent G-rated diversion.
         Produced by actress Diane Baker (Marnie, Adventures of a Young Man), Never Never Land boasts a cast that includes Petula Clark, Cathleen Nesbitt and Anne Seymour.
         Like so many G-rated movies, Never Never Land failed to open theatrically in most of the United States. Theatre owners are too aware that the voices who are hysterically crying out for quality family entertainment seldom support the few good G-rated family films that trickle through each year.
    Z Magazine
    [The now defunct Z cable station was the first American cable station to broadcast the film.]
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: