Bette Midler Read online

  Bette

  Midler

  BOOKS BY MARK BEGO

  The Captain & Tennille (1977)

  Barry Manilow (1977)

  The Doobie Brothers (1980)

  Michael! [Jackson] (1984)

  On the Road with Michael! [Jackson] (1984)

  Rock Hudson: Public & Private (1986)

  Sade! (1986)

  Julian Lennon! (1986)

  The Best of “Modern Screen” (1986)

  Whitney! [Houston] (1986)

  The Linda Gray Story (1988)

  TV Rock (1988)

  Between the Lines [with Debbie Gibson] (1990)

  Linda Ronstadt: It’s So Easy (1990)

  Ice Ice Ice: The Extraordinary Vanilla Ice Story (1991)

  One Is the Loneliest Number [with Jimmy Greenspoon of Three Dog Night] (1991)

  I’m a Believer: My Life of Music, Monkees and Madness [with Micky Dolenz of the Monkees] (1993)

  Country Hunks (1994)

  Country Gals (1994)

  Dancing in the Street: Confessions of a Motown Diva [with Martha Reeves of Martha & the Vandellas] (1994)

  I Fall to Pieces: The Music & the Life of Patsy Cline (1995)

  Rock & Roll Almanac (1996)

  Alan Jackson: Gone Country (1996)

  Raised on Rock: The Autobiography of Elvis Presley’s Step Brother [with David Stanley] (1996)

  George Strait: The Story of Country’s Living Legend (1997)

  Leonardo DiCaprio: Romantic Hero (1998)

  LeAnn Rimes (1998)

  Jewel (1998, Music Sales Press)

  Matt Damon: Chasing a Dream (1998)

  Will Smith: The Freshest Prince (1998)

  Vince Gill (2000)

  Madonna: Blonde Ambition (2000, Cooper Square Press)

  Aretha Franklin: Queen of Soul (2001)

  The Marx Brothers (2001)

  Cher: If You Believe (2001)

  Bette Midler: Still Divine (2002, Cooper Square Press)

  Bonnie Raitt: Still in the Nick of Time (2003, Cooper Square Press)

  Tina Turner (2003, Cooper Square Press)

  Bette

  Midler

  STILL DIVINE

  MARK BEGO

  INTRODUCTION BY RITA COOLIDGE

  First Cooper Square Press edition 2002

  This Cooper Square Press hardcover edition of Bette Midler: Still Divine is an original publication. A portion (now greatly revised and expanded) of the material contained herein appeared in a work by the author entitled Bette Midler: Outrageously Divine, first published as a mass market original paperback in New York in 1987. Bette Midler: Still Divine is published by arrangement with the author.

  Copyright © 2002 by Mark Bego

  Introduction copyright © 2002 by Rita Coolidge

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  Published by Cooper Square Press

  A Member of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

  200 Park Avenue South, Suite 1109

  New York, New York 10003-1503

  www.coopersquarepress.com

  Distributed by National Book Network

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bego, Mark.

  Bette Midler : still divine / Mark Bego ; introduction by Rita Coolidge.—1st Cooper Square Press ed.

  p. cm.

  Revised and expanded edition of Bette Midler: outrageously divine, 1987.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Discography: p. 327

  Filmography: p. 346

  ISBN 978-0-8154-1232-8

  1. Midler, Bette. 2. Singers—United States—Biography. I. Coolidge, Rita. II. Title.

  ML420.M43 B4 2002

  782.42164′092—dc

  212002009347

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992.

  Manufactured in the United States of America.

  To Glenn Hughes:

  Fans around the world

  will always remember you

  as the “Leather Man” from the Village People.

  I will always remember you

  as a dear and caring friend.

  You were the original

  “Knight in Black Leather.”

  CONTENTS

  Introduction by Rita Coolidge

  Prologue

  1 Bette Midler: The Ultimate Diva

  2 Aloha, Honolulu

  3 From Pineapples to the Big Apple

  4 Steaming Up the Continental Baths

  5 Enter: The Divine Miss M

  6 Higher and Higher

  7 Instant Stardom / Instant Breakdown

  8 Clams on the Half Shell

  9 The New Depression

  10 The Bumpy Road Back to the Top

  11 Everything Comes Up Roses

  12 Totally Jinxed

  13 Ready to Begin Again

  14 Her Outrageous Fortune

  15 A Divine New Plateau

  16 From a Distance

  17 Bette of Roses

  18 First Wives Club

  19 Isn’t She Great?

  20 Bette TV

  21 Experience the Divine

  Sources of Quoted Materials

  Bibliography

  Discography

  Filmography

  TV Specials and Series

  Concert Tours

  Websites

  Bette Midler Facts

  Members of the Harlettes

  Mark Bego’s Idea for a Bette Midler Album

  Awards and Distinctions

  Guide to the Episodes of the TV Series Bette, 2000–2001

  Index

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author would like to thank the following people for their help and encouragement with this book: Joseph Amaral, David Andrew, Bart Andrews, Brooks Arthur, Marilyn Arthur, Ann Bego, Angela Bowie, Peter Brown, Joe Canale, Rita Coolidge, Trippy Cunningham, John Deeg, Hector Dejean, Baby Jane Dexter, Michael Dorr, Howard Einbinder, Luke Falby, Terry Fischer, Dr. Clark Fuller, Sasha Goodman, Gary Herb, Tom Hill, Jan Kalajian, Dr. Kamran Kalpari, John Klinger, Sally Kirkland, Moogy Klingman, Buzzy Linhart, Virginia Lohle, Walter McBride, Michael Messina, Keven Mulroy, Jim Pinkston, Ross Plotkin, Bobby Reed, Debby Regiani, Sherry Robb, Richie Rothenstein, David Salidor, Barbara Shelley, Don Siegel, Andy Skurow, Mark Sokoloff, Dr. Steven Tay, George Vissichelli, Beth Wernick, and Dr. Robert Wolfe.

  INTRODUCTION

  I just love Bette Midler: her music, her personality, and everything she stands for. I released my first solo album around the same time that her Divine Miss M album was released. It was an era of female singer/songwriters like Carly Simon and Carole King, and I was very aware of what kind of music everyone else was making at that time.

  While, personally, my music was more folk– and country–based, hers seemed to intersect all sorts of styles. Naturally, Bette really got my attention with her raucous and humorous songs of this era. However, what impressed me the most about her, initially, was her ability to really sell a ballad. She seemed to completely connect with the songwriter’s lyrics and become a part of the song. What she did with John Prine’s “Hello in There” was a great example of how she was able to set a mood with her voice.

  After hearing Bette do her rendition of the classic blues song “Am I Blue?” I, too, wanted to record an album of jazz and pop standards. I liked what she did with that song so much
that in 1975 I recorded it as well, for my It’s Only Love album.

  In 1969, when I was on Joe Cocker’s “Maddogs and Englishmen” tour, I debuted a song called “Superstar.” Although I never did get co-writing credit for my contributions to this composition, it was a song that Bonnie Bramlett and I wrote with Leon Russell. Bonnie and I had first written down the lyrics to it during the “Delaney & Bonnie & Friends” tour of 1969, and the guitarist that we were singing about was Eric Clapton. After I was heard singing the song on the Maddogs and Englishmen album, it was always one of my trademark songs. I loved what Bette did with this song on her first album. She put her heart into this song, and it will always be one of my favorite Midler recordings.

  I love Bette Midler in the movies as well. She has created some of the most memorable film roles of the last thirty years. Her portrayal of a rock singer in The Rose really captured the essence of what it was like to be on 1960s rock shows. She was great in Beaches and so funny in First Wives’ Club. I am certain that there are many more movie roles to come for the Divine Miss M.

  Another thing that I admire her for is her charitable work over the years. When the AIDS crisis began, Bette Midler was right there to lend a hand and sing her songs for the cause to find a cure. Her recent involvement in cleaning up the environment is really admirable. It takes a lot of courage for one person to spearhead cleaning up New York City, but if any diva can accomplish the task, it’s Bette Midler.

  I love Bette Midler. She is a clever, funny, and brilliant performer. Her life story is a fascinating tale of determination, creativity, and survival.

  —RITA COOLIDGE, 2002

  PROLOGUE

  In 1972, when I was in college at Central Michigan University, a friend of mine played an album for me that he had just purchased, called The Divine Miss M. It was by a new singer I had never heard of: Bette Midler. I couldn’t believe how much I loved it. She seemed to hit every musical emotion on it, from rock to camp to swing, and back again. After I had heard it only once, I got in my car and went to the local record shop and bought my own copy, I loved it so much.

  Since that day, I have also owned the 8-track tape of The Divine Miss M, the cassette, and finally the compact disc. Every time I thought of compiling my all-time Top 10 list of albums, this particular disc is always on it.

  The following year, I was thrilled to discover that Bette Midler was going to be appearing in Detroit at the Masonic Auditorium. I couldn’t wait to see her in concert. I had seen a lot of concerts, but I had never seen anyone quite like Bette Midler. She was flashy, she was trashy, and she expended so much energy on stage, neither my friends nor I had ever witnessed a performer quite like Miss Midler. What I saw that night in Detroit made me a lifelong fan of Bette’s.

  The first time I ever wrote about her was in my college newspaper—Central Michigan Life—when I reviewed her 1973 album Bette Midler. By 1975 I had moved to New York City to pursue my writing career. In the spring of that year I was one of the rabid fans who stood in line in the freezing rain to buy tickets to her amazing Clams on the Half Shell show on Broadway.

  In the fall of 1975 I was doing freelance writing for a short-lived Manhattan newspaper called 51 Newsmagazine. I was interviewing celebrities for the publication, and one of the people I interviewed was Barry Manilow. I spent over an hour in his apartment on East 27th Street, talking to him about his newly established solo recording career and about his relationship with Bette Midler. In fact, I have remained friendly with Barry, and on occasion I have run into him at different music industry events. When I wrote my first two books—which were published in 1977—they were The Captain & Tennille and Barry Manilow.

  I continued to follow both Bette’s and Barry’s careers through the years. By the 1980s, my writing career blossomed when I wrote three million-selling books in a row and became a New York Times best-selling author. Suddenly, I had a new platform in which to write about all of my favorite media stars.

  In 1987 New American Library published my paperback biography Bette Midler: Outrageously Divine. It was one of my favorite books, and since I was in New York City, I had access to many of Bette’s friends and co-workers. Much of the interview information from my 1987 book is included in this book. That same year, I ran into Barry Manilow at the annual ABA (American Book Association) Convention, where I was promoting one of my books, and he was promoting his own memoir, Sweet Life.

  We chatted for a few minutes, and during our conversation he paid me a great compliment by telling me, “I loved the book you wrote about Bette.” I was highly flattered and happy to hear that, since I rarely get feedback from the subjects of my books—even though I presently have well over forty books in print.

  I was always a little disappointed that 1987’s Bette Midler: Outrageously Divine didn’t have a longer run in bookstores, as I had so much fun writing it. However, I had a fabulous party to celebrate its publication, and it was excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine.

  In the fifteen years since it was published, so much had happened in Bette’s life and career, and I avidly followed every move, bought every record, watched every movie, and became friendly with so many more of the key people in Midler’s life. I met Harlette Sharon Redd at a benefit at the Palladium in 1989, having been introduced to her by my close friend Glenn Hughes of the Village People. I hosted and sang (yes—sang!) on a nightclub show along with Ula Hedwig of the Harlettes. I met Midler musical director Marc Shaiman in New York City and in Los Angeles. And the list goes on and on.

  When I was approached by Cooper Square Press in the year 2000 about doing this new book on the life and career of Bette Midler, I was ecstatic to have the opportunity to turn all of this material into a brand new book about her. Her story had grown so much, and her body of work had more than doubled since 1987. Furthermore, I was able to look at her early years with a new perspective and add several pages of new material and new interviews to the years that I had previously written about. Among the new material in this book are fresh interviews with Midler record producers Moogy Klingman and Brooks Arthur.

  Bette Midler is wonderful, talented, dazzling, shocking, outrageous, exciting, entertaining, touching, and so is this book!

  Not only is Miss M “still divine”—to paraphrase her own words: She’s beautiful, damn it!

  —MARK BEGO, 2002

  1

  BETTE MIDLER: THE ULTIMATE DIVA

  She stands only five-foot one-and-a-half-inches tall, but in the black high heel shoes she wears, she looks much taller as she struts across the stage. She is wearing a fashionable black designer pant suit, with a rhinestone-studded top. Her hair is exquisitely coiffed into a mass of champagne blonde curls atop her head. She looks glamorous, and she is more svelte than audiences are used to seeing lately. She is on stage at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, in a concert performance called Diva Las Vegas. Known for her chameleon-like quality for singing songs from many different genres, she launches into a number sung to the tune of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” from the Broadway show Gypsy. However, instead of singing the familiar opening line of “I had a dream,” she sings new lyrics to the song to signify her present stature in the show business world: “I’m in a hit! A big FUCKING hit, BABY!” The crowd roars with delight, but before the song is over, she lyrically commands people to “blow some smoke up my ass!” Are they insulted? Hell no—they love it! Is there any doubt who the diva in question might be? Only one person can carry on in such a way and have the crowd begging for more. It could only be Bette Midler.

  It is January of 1997, and in Midleresque terms, everything truly IS coming up roses for her at the moment. She has just starred in the biggest box-office hit of her film career, First Wives Club; her greatest hits album—Experience the Divine—has been certified Platinum in America; and she is on a highly touted concert tour that is selling out wherever she goes. Even the TV special that this performance is being filmed for is destined to win her both an Emmy Award and a Cable ACE Award.
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  During the performance, she tells filthy jokes, salutes strippers, lampoons lounge singers, sings songs about her breasts, and even heckles audience members from the stage. There is nothing she won’t do or say to titillate the audience or to get a laugh. However, when she slows down the pace of the show to sing a sentimental song, she has the audience in the palm of her hand. As the familiar opening piano notes sound, with metronome-like repetition, this tiny-but-bawdy blonde begins to sing what has become her signature song. She has the audience mesmerized and totally in her spell as she intently sings “The Rose.”

  For Bette, roses have always held a special significance in her career. It seems that everything she names after the fabled flower somehow creatively blossoms. Her first film, The Rose, netted her an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award. The song “The Rose” became her first million-selling single—which won her a Grammy Award. Her soundtrack album, The Rose, became the first Triple Platinum disc of her career. When she tackled the role of Mama Rose in the 1993 film Gypsy, she won another Golden Globe and another Emmy. When she recorded a 1995 LP called Bette of Roses, it became her fifth million-selling album, further solidifying her reputation as one of the most highly acclaimed vocal stylists and accomplished actresses in show business.

  However, the rose is also a flower with painfully sharp thorns. Like the rose, Midler’s career has had more than its share of thorns along the way. Hers has been a career filled with extreme peaks and valleys. Some of Bette’s projects are wildly successful, and others have been disappointing failures. Very often, the projects Bette really puts her heart into come up short.

  The years following 1997 have brought both highs and lows to Bette. In 1998 she released a new album called Bathhouse Betty, which became her highly anticipated return to her Divine Miss M formula of combining bawdy, trashy, and humorous songs with sensitive ballads. It became a big hit and was quickly certified “Gold.” Yet her next album, Bette (2000), while finely crafted, failed to find an audience. After the success of First Wives Club, it would have seemed that anything Midler touched would turn to box-office magic. However, her next three starring roles found her in one onscreen miscalculation after another: That Old Feeling (1997), Drowning Mona (2000), and Isn’t She Great? (2000).