Petula Clark gets her big dramatic chance

For years petula Clark has been craving for TV drama--with the accent on drama. She has wanted an acting role where she can prove that she isn't just a "sweet little girl."
    Now she's got her chance. In Thursday evenings's Television Playhouse presentation, Guest in the House, Pt has been cast by Granada TV as a frail, neurotic and possessive young woman.
     She has been the darling of the British public since she starred--aged 13--with Sid Field in the film musical London Town But of recent years--she is now 24--she has shown a little impatience if people hint that she shouldn't grow up.
     She has said:
    "What do you want--short socks and pigtails until I qualify for false teeth?"
    "I simply can't go on being a sweet little girl any longer. I'd like to be a spitfire--or even somebody horrid."
     And she told me: "I want to show everybody I can act as well as sing."
    It looks as if this part is just about the best opportunity she could have.
    The authors of Guest in the House, Hagar White and Dale Eunson, apparently accept that certain types of women are natural enemies and in their play have engineered a clash of these instinctive antagonisms.
     In their dawing of the character that Pet is to play is the general feminine opinion; that they have also quite clearly accepted what I'm told the more angelic and naive a woman appears on the surface, the more diabolically cunning she may be.
     Pet, of course, has had serious roles before. "But never an important one on TV," she says. She has made 24 films, most in lightish roles.

Exceptions were a nurse in White Corridors and a neurotic woman in That Woman Opposite, yet to be released. On stage she had a meaty part in The Constant Nymph.
     When I talked to Pet she made this point: "I started out with the intention of becoming an actress. When I was seven I went to see Flora Robson in Mary Tudor at Streatham. I decided right then that I was going to become an actress--but I used my singing to get into show business."
     Now she's older she finds that appearing in public is considerably more frightening than when she was a child: "Nowadays I have to think a little bit more about things. Life certainly doesn't get any less complicated as you grow older."
     There's one thing Pet wants to make clear. This acting bug of hers does not mean that she wants to stop singing.
     "I would like to be able to combine the two, singing and acting. It isn't easy. But my idol, Frank Sinatra, has proved that it can be done."
     I reminded Pet that by the time Guest in the House is screened ITV may have a potential audience of ten million viewers.
     How does she feel about so many people witnessing her bid?
     "I don't like to think about that," said she.