Bette Midler Read online

  Frustrated and despondent over her ability to find a successful movie project, in the year 2000 she decided that the future of her acting career was going to be in television. She had great success in the past with TV specials—why not a series? With that, she threw herself into the production of her own half-hour situation comedy, entitled Bette. It proved to be one of biggest mistakes of her entire career.

  She knew that she was taking a risk by bringing her bigger-than-life persona to the small screen. According to her at the time, “It has been suggested to me by friends that I should be more careful about this as a career move. But I say, ‘What are you talking about? I’ve had a great career. They can’t take thirty years away from me.’ What can they do—put you in jail because you’ve done a lousy sitcom?—Maybe they should!” (1).

  The show drew a great opening episode audience, but by midseason was performing so poorly in the ratings that the network pulled the plug on it and chose not to air all of the episodes filmed—or to put it into reruns. Midler, at the time, was crushed. She even threatened to write a tell-all exposé about her infuriating network nightmare, in a book entitled Canceled. Other than an unbilled one-scene role in the film What Women Want, for over a year she launched no new projects; her only public performances were at charity or special events.

  But this is nothing new for Bette. She has been through these slow eras before, and she has always emerged stronger than ever. There have been great disappointments for her along the way—but her quiet periods never last long. Like water off a duck’s back, misfortune never keeps a good diva down. To quote a phrase often used by the bawdy and outspoken Midler herself: “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke!”

  For the last four decades, the self-proclaimed “Divine Miss M” has forged a unique career, peerlessly unmatched in the sheer outrageousness of it. She has the unique ability to switch from drama to comedy, from silly to sentimental, and from tasteful to raunchy, within the blink of an eye. Even her looks, her weight, and her hair color constantly vary. But whether she is a blonde, a redhead, or a brunette—and she has been them all—she cannot disguise the incredible talent that she possesses.

  There is no one quite like Bette. Singer, actress, TV star, movie star, stand-up comedian, best-selling author, media goddess, and charitable humanitarian. Her career has been one of great variety. Her songs are sometimes comically outlandish, sometimes sexually risqué, and sometimes they can bring an audience to tears. On one hand, she has scored her biggest musical successes with the sentimental ballads “The Rose,” “The Wind beneath My Wings,” and “From a Distance.” Yet on the other hand, she has simultaneously built herself a wild reputation for lewd, bawdy, and blue songs like “Doctor Long John,” “Pretty Legs and Great Big Knockers,” “My Knight in Black Leather,” “Drinking Again,” “Marahuana,” and “Empty Bed Blues.” She has proved time and time again that there are few legends quite like her in the history of the music business.

  In the mid-’70s, when Midler was the toast of Broadway and records, she dreamed of becoming a movie star. At the time it seemed like such a natural move, since her elaborate stage shows and dramatic story-songs featured such varied role-playing. Although the path has at times been bumpy, she has produced a body of filmed and recorded work that is awesome in breadth and impressive in scope. How incredible to think that since that time she has starred in well over twenty films and has recorded and released over eighteen albums!

  She has also had some of the most memorable movie roles in the last thirty years of cinema. Her dramatic film debut as a drugged-out rock star-on-a-collision-course in The Rose won her an Academy Award nomination in the Best Actress category. Her back-to-back hits Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Ruthless People, and Outrageous Fortune made her the biggest movie star at Disney Studios in the mid-’80s. Her tear-jerker film Beaches was another huge box-office hit for Midler and a feather in her cap for her own company, All Girls Productions. Her over-the-top turn as a witch in Hocus Pocus has become a perennial favorite Halloween-season family film. Her gutsy role in the film Gypsy brought Broadway excitement back to both large and small screens around the world, winning more awards and accolades for the diva. Unfortunately, not all of Bette’s movies are financial successes. Some of her best work on the screen is in films that don’t become huge, but are greatly entertaining, like her tour de force as a U.S.O. entertainer in For the Boys. Or, simultaneously arguing and shopping with Wood Allen in Scenes from a Mall. Or, playing a pair of mismatched twins opposite a Lily Tomlin duo in Big Business.

  Bette Midler wasn’t a shrinking violet when it came to launching her career while cementing her wild reputation. She virtually exploded onto the America show business scene in 1972, with her schizophrenically varied repertoire of songs and her acid-tongued humor. Her inexhaustible and outrageous onstage and off-stage performances quickly established her as one of the true music industry originals of the 1970s. Her initial legion of fans found her eclectic singing and her onstage mugging a bizarre combination of the Shangri-Las, Ethel Waters, the Andrews Sisters, Janis Joplin, and Mae West.

  She called herself a “diva,” and she described her singing style as “sleaze with ease.” Cash Box magazine called her “a really great star” (2). Rolling Stone called her “One hell of a talent” (3). Record World called her “a superstar of superstars” (3). The gay population—whom she openly courted—called her their own personal discovery. Newsweek called her “the reigning cult figure of New York’s restless underground” (4). And once in Buffalo someone called the vice squad—and busted her band!

  Throughout the 1970s Bette did everything that she could to attain the kind of stardom that was predicted for her. She set high standards for herself. She stopped at nothing to endear herself to her fans. One night onstage in St. Louis she even flashed her breasts. She “mooned” an audience in Massachusetts and once hatched an elaborate plot to tape rolled marijuana “joints” to the bottom of each audience member’s seat as a midconcert “treat” from “Divine.” Midler caused a scandal in Chicago when she closed her show by announcing to the audience, “I thought you were wonderful. . . . And to this band, I’d like to say one thing: FUCK YOU!” (5). It seemed there was no end to what she would do for attention. She not only became a star, she became a sensation!

  Prizes, trophies, and awards? Her living-room mantel is littered with nearly every form of gilded statuette imaginable. She won the first of her four Grammy Awards in 1974 as “Best New Artist,” following it up a month later by winning a special Tony Award for her record-breaking three-week run at the Palace Theater on Broadway. In 1975 she set a new Broadway box-office record for first-day ticket sales to her Clams on the Half-Shell Revue at the Minskoff Theater. Her 1979 TV special Ol’ Red Hair Is Back was awarded an Emmy. In 1980 she received an Academy Award nomination and two Golden Globe Awards for her dramatic film debut in The Rose. That same year she was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for autographing 1,500 copies of her best-selling book A View from a Broad in a mere six hours. Also in 1980, Bette won her second Grammy Award for her song “The Rose” and a third one for her contribution to the children’s album In Harmony. She broke box-office records at New York City’s famed Radio City Music Hall for ticket sales of her “De Tour” shows in 1983. In 1980 she was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe for her performance in The Rose. Her hit “The Wind beneath My Wings” in 1990 won her a fourth Grammy Award. In 1993 she received another Academy Award nomination and another Golden Globe for her dream project For the Boys. And the list goes on and on.

  Tornado of energy that she is, her stardom has also catapulted several members of her musical entourage to fame. In the early 1970s her musical director was a then-unknown piano player named Barry Manilow. He coproduced her first two hit albums and launched his own career as an incredibly successful solo superstar. When Bette made her Carnegie Hall debut, one of her first background-singing Harlettes was an aspiring songwriter named Me
lissa Manchester. She has also become a huge singing star. Another trio of Harlettes left her to record their own successful album. In the 1990s former Harlette Katie Sagal became a TV star when she portrayed the role of Peg Bundy on the hit series Married with Children. And both Jenifer Lewis and Linda Hart have gone on to successful acting careers in films and TV since their Harlette days with Midler.

  In addition to her dazzling career glories, Bette Midler’s bizarre road to fame is dotted with personal heartbreak and tragedy. For a large part of her career, it seemed that every time she attained one of her creative goals, she suffered a personal loss.

  Born the youngest of three daughters to a house painter and his wife, Bette grew up the only Caucasian in her school class in Honolulu, Hawaii. She remembers, “It wasn’t easy being a Jewish kid in a Samoan neighborhood” (6). Having always felt like a misfit in school, Bette eventually gained self-confidence when she discovered that she had the ability to make people laugh at her jokes and her comedic singing. She studied drama at the University of Hawaii and earned money by packing pineapples in a canning plant. Not exactly glamorous. But when there was an “extra” casting call for the film Hawaii, Bette landed a featured role as a seasick missionary, and suddenly she was in show business.

  With the earnings from her role in Hawaii, Bette left home and headed for New York City, attracted by the lure of Broadway. It wasn’t long before she landed a part in the hit show Fiddler on the Roof. During her three-year run in the show, her sister Judy came to visit her in New York City. In a freak accident, Judy was struck by a moving car, pinned against a wall, and killed.

  After three years in Fiddler, Bette began to develop her own signature sound in small nightclubs like Hilly’s in Greenwich Village and the Improvisation. It wasn’t long before she started performing her act for men dressed in bath towels at the Continental Baths. Next came television, records, and her own triumphant Broadway revue.

  At the height of her initial success, Bette suffered a near collapse from nervous exhaustion. Just as Midler was about to celebrate the popularity of her first film, her mother, Ruth, died of cancer. Like the character called “The Rose,” throughout her life Bette had always had on odd relationship with her parents. While her mother loved her career, her father was distant. Finally, by 1986, Bette made peace with her father when she discovered she was pregnant. Fred Midler had long refused to see his “foul-mouthed” daughter perform in concert, but they at last learned to deal with each other’s opposing viewpoints. Just as she was enjoying her newfound film success, however, her father died, leaving much of the responsibility for taking care of her retarded younger brother, Danny, on Bette’s shoulders. Hers has not always been an easy life.

  Bette Midler has had a wildly erratic career, only further accentuated by the reviews she receives in the press. Critics either love her projects or viciously hate them. However, Bette’s career has never been fueled or destroyed by good or bad reviews. Her true fans flock to her movies and her concerts or purchase her record albums regardless of what the critics have to say. And if she releases an occasional “turkey,” she has the ability and the drive to simply go back to the drawing board and invent a new winning formula.

  Cinematically, she has stood at the fork of many roads. Often she heads down the right path to success (The Rose, Down & Out in Beverly Hills, Outrageous Fortune, Beaches, First Wives Club), and occasionally she unwittingly heads in a completely opposite direction (Isn’t She Great?, Stella, Drowning Mona). When she was a huge hit in her first film role as The Rose, it seemed as if every time she would get in front of the movie cameras, it would turn into gold. Unfortunately, the movie business isn’t like that at all. Some of the best blueprints look great on paper, but, once constructed, are less than architectural feats. Back-to-back box-office bombs—Divine Madness and Jinxed—nearly drove her to a nervous breakdown and right out of Hollywood in the early ’80s.

  Work on television has likewise proved “hit” and “miss” for Miss M. She has won an Emmy Award and Golden Globe Awards for her most successful forays into broadcast and cable television (Ol’ Redhair Is Back, The Tonight Show finale, Gypsy). Yet on the other hand, she has also misguidedly stumbled into what is destined to be remembered as the worst quagmire of her entire career—her disappointing TV sitcom. Bette was perhaps the worst TV series ever overproduced for a major multimedia star. Joyless, forced, and decidedly unfunny, it sent her in a complete downward spin. However, for Midler, it merely meant she was ripe for yet another comeback.

  Bette has been captured on film and on record many times over the past four decades, but to really understand and appreciate her as a performer, one must see her live in concert. Few stars expend so much energy and share so much of themselves with an audience as she does. In her ever-changing stage show she has invented several different personas to bring to life her most outrageous antics. First and foremost, there is her bawdy and trashy diva, “the Divine Miss M.” When she tells dirty jokes, she is Soph, the sluttish vaudeville-like comedienne, who was originally modeled after Sophie Tucker. There is Vickie Eydie, the cheesy lounge singer who is trapped in a tacky nightclub act not of her own design. There’s the Magic Lady—also known as Nanette, the forlorn shopping bag woman who turns despair into optimism. Bette’s screaming rock & roll blues-singer persona is clearly an extension of the fictional character she portrayed in The Rose. And last but not least: Dolores De Lago, the Toast of Chicago, the schmaltzy songstress in a mermaid suit.

  Bette has always held the great female vocalists in high esteem. Her long-time favorites include Aretha Franklin, Edith Piaf, and Bessie Smith. However, there are also a few singers of whom she has never been too fond. This list includes Helen Reddy—“She should be singing ‘I am Woman.’ Who could tell?” (6); the Carpenters: “I can’t believe I’m on the same stage where Karen Carpenter got her drums banged!” (6); and Madonna: “The only thing that girl will ever do like a virgin is have a baby in a stable!” (7). In 1999 Midler scored her first Number 1 dance hit, by singing the celebratory song of self-deification “I’m Beautiful.” In other words: Don’t cross this diva!

  “In your young life, you rebel against values you think are square. After you’ve lived awhile, you realize they are good values, and there’s a reason they’ve been around for thousands of years” (8). Wait a minute, Bette said that? She couldn’t have possibly said that . . . not “the Divine Miss Midler!” Oddly enough, she did. Although she certainly had her “wild” phase, underneath the profanity-spewing surface she is a very moral person, with a steadfast work ethic. She has made her way up the ladder of success due to her hard work and single-minded determination. She once proclaimed that what she most wanted to become was “a legend.” It is a goal she has amply accomplished.

  In addition to being the number one “taste-free” purveyor of “trash with flash,” Bette Midler is also a devoted wife and mother, as well as a passionate activist when it comes to human rights issues. In the 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic ran like the “black plague” through the gay population, Midler became one of the few stars in Hollywood to give open, compassionate, and undying support to the community. In the 1990s she turned her focus from “trashy” songs to helping the environment by cleaning up real trash in the parks and highways of America. When the World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists in September of 2001, Midler toured Ground Zero and sang her poignant anthem “The Wind beneath My Wings” at the memorial service, which was held in Yankee Stadium that same month.

  Has movie stardom changed Bette Midler? Is she still the mud-flinging woman who insults public figures, or is she now a tasteful housewife whose fashionable home has been featured on the pages of Architectural Digest? What was the reason for her sudden move from Coldwater Canyon in Los Angeles back to New York City in the ’90s? Has Bette Midler really killed off her wild alter ego, the Divine Miss M, and become a full-fledged adult? Unthinkable!

  In the mid-1980s, after a decade of divine madness and out
landish behavior, Bette announced, “I’ve sown all my wild oats. . . . I’m prepared to settle down and be a mom, because I’ve had twenty years of real nuttiness” (9). Oh my God . . . had too much avocado dip at too many Hollywood parties mellowed her out to the point of no return? The sarcastic no-holds-barred Bette once said, “What I want is to be a bisexual fantasy. I want to be the most loved, the most desired loved woman on this earth” (6). Is she still the multisexual Peter Pan-like diva for all seasons? Or, has she forsaken her convention-defying silliness to become one of The Stepford Wives?

  Has time tamed the outrageous Bette? Or is the calmer, more contained side of Miss M simply another facet of this original show-business gem? Predictability has never even entered the mind of this divine queen of camp. There are many sides to Bette Midler and always have been. Has the role as mother and wife changed her forever? “Do you mean am I going to remain vul-gah and crass?” she laughingly counter-questions (10).

  These and several other mysteries in the vivid life of Bette Midler beg to be answered. How did she end up in an all-male gay bathhouse? Why did Paul Simon strip off her vocals on his recording of “Gone at Last” and replace her with Phoebe Snow? What is the truth about her clashes with Bruce Springsteen? Who did Ken Wahl have to pretend to be kissing to get through the filmed love scenes with her on camera? Did she jinx Jinxed, or was she set up as the “fall girl” for a picture that was doomed from the start? What compelled her to become one of the first entertainers to openly rally to raise money for the AIDS epidemic? Was she devastated when her 1991 film For the Boys received strong critical reviews only to go “bust” at the box-office? Did the huge success of Gypsy signal a new Broadway career for her? What is the truth about her long-running feud with Cher? What’s up with her supposed “affair” with journalist Geraldo Rivera? What’s up with that? What the hell was Midler thinking when she produced that dreadful network television series—Bette? And how on Earth did she get the nickname “Bathhouse Betty?”