Anita Harris

Anita Madeleine Harris (born 3 June 1942) is an English actress, singer and entertainer.

Harris sang with the Cliff Adams Singers for three years from 1961 and had a number of chart hits during the 1960s. She appeared in the Carry On films Follow That Camel (1967) and Carry On Doctor (1967).

Harris was born in Somerset; her family moved from Midsomer Norton to Bournemouth when she was seven. She won a talent contest at the age of three. However, it was her penchant for figure skating which led to her performing career: she began skating at the neighbourhood rink, eventually becoming a regular at the Queens Ice Rink in London. Seen by a talent scout shortly before her sixteenth birthday, she was offered a chance to skate in Paris or to travel to Las Vegas, where she would be a dancer in a chorus line. She accepted the latter, and danced at the El Rancho Hotel in Las Vegas. "We did three shows a night and on the 12th night, we had the night off", she said years later.

On returning to the UK in June 1959, she performed in a vocal group known as the Granadiers, and then spent three years with the Cliff Adams Singers. She was still in her teens when John Barry's manager, Tony Lewis, offered her a recording contract with EMI in 1961 and she made her first recordings with the John Barry Seven, a group which was a successful chart act. This first single, a double A-side of "I Haven't Got You", written by Lionel Bart and "Mr One and Only", was issued in October 1961, but did not reach the charts.

Subsequent to their meeting, when they both auditioned for a musical revue, Mike Margolis and Harris formed a personal and professional relationship, marrying in 1973. He became her manager and wrote the songs which served as her second and third singles: "Lies"/"Don't Think About Love" (Vocalion, September 1964) and "Willingly"/"At Last Love" (Decca, February 1965).

In January 1965, she performed at the San Remo Music Festival, although her duet with Beppe Cardile, "L'amore è partito", failed to reach the finals. She made her label debut for Pye Records with the May 1965 release "Trains and Boats and Planes"; however, rival versions by both the song's composer Burt Bacharach (with vocals by the Breakaways) and Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas eclipsed her recording. She had four subsequent releases on Pye, including the only evident recording of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David composition "London Life".

In 1966, she moved to CBS Records, where her debut release was also her debut album, Somebody's in My Orchard. Her chart breakthrough came in the summer of 1967 with the single "Just Loving You", a Tom Springfield composition which singer Dusty Springfield had suggested her brother give to Harris after the two women had performed on the same episode of Top of the Pops.

Recorded at Olympic Studios in a session produced by Margolis and featuring harmonica virtuoso Harry Pitch, "Just Loving You" had been released in January 1967 but did not reach the UK Top 50 until 29 June 1967. Even after peaking at No. 6 on 26 August 1967, "Just Loving You" remained in the UK Top 40 until the end of the year, and was reported to have accumulated UK sales of 625,000 in six months,^{[citation needed]} Besides charting at No. 18 in Ireland, "Just Loving You" was a Top Ten hit in South Africa, where sales reached 200,000 copies^{[citation needed]}. The disc was released in September 1967 in the United States, where it rose to No. 20 on the "Easy Listening" chart in Billboard and approached the mainstream Pop "Hot 100" chart. It rose no higher than No. 120 on the "Bubbling Under" chart. In January 1968, Harris made her only appearance on the UK album chart when her Just Loving You album reached No. 29.