and all the Ward Singers were given special certificates of recognition by the U.S. Army. Ward co-starred in the Hollywood movie A Time to Sing, starring Hank Williams, Jr., Shelley Fabares, Ed Begley, and D'Urville Martin. She was cast as a waitress in a Nashville, Tennessee cafeteria who inspires a young singer, played by Hank Williams, Jr., to pursue his dream of becoming a country recording artist. There are also several scenes of the Clara Ward Singers performing gospel songs in the film. This movie was released by MGM in 1968 and Clara's picture appears on lobby cards and other movie advertisements. Other movie appearances include Its Your Thing, starring The Isley Brothers, and Spree, also known as Night Time In Las Vegas. The Clara Ward Singers toured in Australia, Japan, Europe, Indonesia, and Thailand during the late-1960s through the early-1970s. They had a one-day TV special in London, England. They were in constant demand on American television programs and appeared on The Mike Douglas Show over a dozen times. They appeared on Oral Roberts' Country Roads TV special, later released as a soundtrack album. Clara continued to perform at her mother's church, the Miracle Temple of Faith for All People in Los Angeles, California, as well as at Victory Baptist Church. Her mother, Gertrude Ward, also had a popular religious radio program in the Los Angeles market. Personal life Despite her career success Clara's life was an unhappy one. Financial hardships caused her and her family to move 19 times before her adulthood. Sexually abused in childhood by a cousin and relentlessly driven as prime breadwinner by her mother throughout her life, Clara's life was one of constant work and little joy. According to her sister Willa, Gertrude Ward recognized Clara's exceptional musical ability when Clara was a child and controlled and manipulated Clara throughout her life. In her biography of Clara, her sister Willa attests that Gertrude worked to prevent Clara from forming any romantic attachments. Although Clara eloped as a teenager (at age 17 in 1941), her mother Gertrude forced her to tour and the strain caused the always frail Clara to have a miscarriage. Her marriage ended after only one year. Willa describes Clara as explaining her occasional lesbian encounters as the sexual expression likely to escape her mother's notice. Her only real happiness seems to have come from her longtime romance with Rev. C. L.