Anita Harris
b. 3 June 1942, Midsomer Norton, Somerset/Avon, England. After winning a talent contest when she was only three, Harris learnt to play the piano and attended the Hampshire School of Drama. She trained to be a dancer, and, while in her teens, performed in Europe and in the chorus at the El Rancho in Las Vegas. On her return to Britain, she sang with the Granadiers on television, alongside Gerry Dorsey, who subsequently found fame and fortune after changing his name to Engelbert Humperdinck. In 1961, whilst working with the Cliff Adams Singers, she came to the notice of composer and bandleader John Barry who offered her a contract with his organization. Her first record was a Lionel Bart song, I Haven't Got You, on which she was accompanied by the John Barry Orchestra. Besides working consistently on radio, television, and in clubs and theatres throughout the UK—including two seasons at the London Palladium—Harris won the Gold Medal for Britain at the San Remo Song Festival, and then had a Top 10 hit in 1967 with Tom Springfield's Just Loving You. This was also the title of her 1968 Top 30 album which, when re-released in 1976, is said to have sold over a million copies. Her other (minor) singles hits in the late '60s were Playground, Anniversary Waltz, and Dream A Little Dream Of Me. She proved to be particularly popular on television and appeared in The Saturday Crowd with Leslie Crowther, Magic Box with David Niven, and numerous other programmes starring Bernard Braden, Tommy Cooper, and Morecambe And Wise. One of her most memorable screen projects was Jumbleland, an innovative children's programme which was devised by her writer-director-husband Mike Margolis. In the '70s Harris twice played Peter Pan in National Theatre productions, and established herself as one of the leading ‘principal boys’ in traditional Christmas pantomimes. In the early '80s she took over the role of Grizabella in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, while her cabaret act continued to attract excellent reviews, particularly for several appearances at London's Talk Of The Town and the Savoy Hotel. In 1982 she was named Performer Of The Year by the Variety Club of Great Britain, and two years later headlined at the Club's Ball Of The Year. In the '90s, as well as continuing to delight cabaret audiences at venues such as the Pizza On The Park in London, Harris spent a good deal of her time starring in provincial productions of two biographical musicals: Nightingale, the story of ‘the lady with the lamp’, Florence Nightingale; and Bertie, a very different tale about that debonair man/woman-about-town, the legendary entertainer, Vesta Tilley.