Bette Midler Page 4

  Of the music that Bette was exposed to at that time, she remembers mostly what she heard on the radio airwaves. “I used to listen to the radio a lot,” she recalls, “but always AM. Before rock & roll it was mostly white music. I didn’t get into rhythm and blues until later on in rock & roll like the early sixties. I loved the girl groups and I loved straight ahead rock & roll: the Coasters, and the Del Vikings, and the Skyliners. I wasn’t a collector” (6). At that point her only musical experience came as part of an all-girl trio. They sang folk songs, and they called themselves the Pieridine Three (“It means ‘like a butterfly’ ”) (13).

  Like so many people who have lonely, unhappy childhoods and teenage years, Bette had a powerful drive toward making something of herself. She had felt so much like an ugly duckling that she was determined to prove to all of the classmates who’d snubbed her, to her strict parents who’d disciplined her, and, more important, to herself, that she could make her dreams a reality and become the envy of them all.

  According to Bette, “When you’re an outcast, your imagination works, becomes honed a little sharper. You learn to rely on yourself more. It readies you for what life is really about: Life isn’t all camaraderie and games. I guess it’s better to have a miserable childhood and a terrific adulthood than to live the other way around” (21).

  The summer after she graduated from high school, Bette landed a job in a local pineapple canning factory. It was her job to select the uniform pieces of freshly sliced pineapple off the assembly line as the pieces went by, leaving the core and rind behind. She sat there, hour after hour, in her rubber gloves and dreamed of how she was going to find stardom as an actress one day.

  That fall, Bette entered the University of Hawaii and began realizing her fantasies by majoring in drama. It was during her first and only college year that her first major personal tragedy came. Her best friend, Beth Ellen Childers, was killed in a car accident. According to Bette, she carried on so much at hearing of the death of her friend that “My mom thought we must have been lesbians” (16). Bette mourned the loss of her best friend for months.

  In 1965 Bette’s big break came. She discovered that several sequences of the film version of James Michener’s epic novel Hawaii were going to be filmed on location, and that extras from the local community were to be used. She literally jumped at the opportunity to be cast in the film and managed to land a tiny part. She played the role of a missionary’s wife aboard the ship that Julie Andrews and Max Von Sydow sailed to the islands.

  Bette is first seen in the movie when Von Sydow is preaching to the travelers on the voyage from New England. The waves are heaving, the boat is pitching back and forth, and several of the travelers are seasick. A young brunette Bette is seen looking queasy, while Von Sydow spouts biblical rhetoric. When the ship lands on Maui, Bette can be spotted aboard the main deck if you watch closely. In the final print of the film she has no lines of dialogue.

  Much more footage of film is generally shot than ever reaches the screen. When the production company was finished shooting on location in Hawaii, several of the local actors and actresses were flown to Los Angeles to complete some of the scenes. Much to her excitement, Bette was asked to return to L.A. with the company.

  As far as she was concerned, that trip to Hollywood was to be her big break, and she wasn’t going to blow it. The money that Bette made on the movie wasn’t going to be squandered on frivolous possessions. Her earnings from Hawaii represented her ticket to New York City to break into the theater. “I thought that if I had to have a career in the theater, the way to do it was to get a job on the New York stage. I mean, they don’t have much theater in Chicago or Cleveland. See, I figured it was the only place to go” (6).

  When she was filming Hawaii in L.A., Bette hoarded every penny she made. She recalls, “I was paid three hundred dollars a week and seventy dollars per diem, and I lived on two dollars a day. When it was over, I took my money—my little savings pot with a thousand dollars—and I came to New York at the end of 1965. I left fifteen hundred at home, just in case I had to go back, or in case they had to send it to me. I was really frightened. I had to go out and get a job. I wanted the money to last. I think I still have that original thousand!” (12).

  Back in Hawaii, after filming her movie debut, Midler began to hatch her New York City plan. By this point, Bette had already moved out of her parents’ house. “I was living with a guy and I didn’t want my ma to know, so I had to move out of the house. I was nineteen—it was the right time to do it” (12). Her move to Manhattan represented an even bigger step toward realizing her career ambitions.

  Bette distinctly remembers that day in November of 1965 when her family drove her to the Honolulu airport. She wore a plaid dress, a girdle with a garter belt, nylons, and a pair of bright red high heels. Sad—but resolved—she said her tearful good-byes to her family, and even her stern father had a tear in his eye. It was the end of an era for teenage Bette Midler. She said “aloha” to Hawaii—and off she flew for New York City to become a star of the theater. Everybody has dreams, but few people really put them into action. However, Bette was determined to make sure that hers came true.

  3

  FROM PINEAPPLES TO THE BIG APPLE

  When Bette Midler arrived in New York City, she wanted to live right in the middle of the theater district. Times Square, the Great White Way, the home of Broadway shows, opening nights, dinners at Sardi’s, limousines, and the stars of stage and screen. Unfortunately, at that point in time it was also the home of prostitutes, hustlers, drug dealers, seedy porno theaters, pickpockets, and thieves. Right in the center of the profane and the sacred, that’s where she headed.

  Her first stop was a seedy, rundown hotel amid all of the action. It was dirty, in a dangerous neighborhood, and completely affordable.

  Despite the sleaze and potential danger, Bette couldn’t care less. All she could think of was the magnetic glitter of Broadway. “I was very anxious to get to the city. I didn’t notice that there was anything wrong with it,” she remembers, seeing it all through rose-colored glasses. “I didn’t even notice the place. All I saw was a line of theaters: Forty-Fourth Street, Forty-Sixth Street. I didn’t even KNOW Forty-Seventh Street! All I knew was that there were theaters there and real people onstage, and that was all I could think of” (21).

  “I really blossomed out when I came here. I never felt I was home till I came here, I became all the things I wanted to be. It was like I was finally free” (12).

  Bette remembers the Broadway Central Hotel quite distinctly: the huge hole in the mattress, the seedy communal bathroom down the hall, the winos passed out in the hallway, and the lesbian bar downstairs. According to her, “I developed a lot of wind, running from all manner of strange people . . . fighting the dykes off with a club!” (16).

  However, after being under the watchful eyes of her parents in Honolulu, Bette found New York City to be one big adventure after another. “The first month that I was here was when they had the blackout. I thought it was fabulous. And right after that, in January, the subway went on strike. And, I was living down here and I had to go up to 119th Street to get to work every day. I was working at Columbia University—typing. So it was like this incredible hassle. But I just thought it was a lark!” she recalls (6).

  According to her, she was mesmerized by the everyday people she encountered while living in the Times Square neighborhood. “I’m fascinated by people whom I guess most people consider bad. People outside the pale, Tennessee Williams characters. People who have found themselves—through no fault of their own—in certain positions in life . . . alcoholics, junkies, prostitutes and Bowery bums. I like people who live lives outside the ordinary” (29).

  Almost immediately, she began focusing on her acting career. “I figured that the best way to get into the theater was in a musical comedy, because it was the easiest nut to crack. I mean, if you don’t have a lot of credit in serious or classical acting, they won’t even look at you.
And I didn’t have training when I came to the city. It was all instinct and guts. I mean, I wasn’t disciplined or trained or anything like that. I mean, I had no idea of what I was doing. I was just elbowing my way into the wing. I was so in love with it. So I figured I’d get a job to support myself and learn while I earn” (6).

  Her file-clerk job at Columbia University was just one in a long succession that she took to pay the rent while she pursued acting parts in the theater. During those initial months in Manhattan, Bette also found work selling gloves at Stern’s department store and as a hat-check girl in a restaurant. Those jobs were all short-lived. She would end up quitting, after waiting on grouchy customers who complained of receiving the wrong hat or fussy women who couldn’t decide on what pair of gloves to buy.

  One of Bette’s most bizarre part-time jobs came in Union City, New Jersey, where she found herself working as a go-go dancer. The most shocking aspect of that job was seeing the part of New Jersey that lies right across the Hudson River from New York City. Her parents had always spoken of their lovely native state, but Bette was horrified when she saw how gray and industrial it all was.

  “They were living in paradise [in Hawaii], yet they always talked about how beautiful New Jersey was, and how they missed their family here. So I always wanted to come to New Jersey,” she explains. “When I got here I almost died, it’s the tackiest, dirtiest place in the world. No one seems to even try to keep it clean!” (23).

  Eventually, she made some friends, and she often went out exploring in Manhattan. One of her favorite pastimes was wandering around Greenwich Village in hopes that she would run into Bob Dylan—as he was one of her musical idols. But through it all, it was theater that was on her mind.

  Coming to New York City with little more than boundless energy and blind ambition, Bette constantly made the rounds of all the casting agencies and “open calls” for stage shows. Ninety percent of the time, the reception she received was less than warm, but that did not discourage her one bit.

  “It didn’t faze me, though,” she claims of her usual rejection by agents and directors. “ ‘Okay,’ I’d think to myself, ‘go ahead, shut the door in my face! Be out to lunch! Hang up on me! I don’t care: I’ll be back!’ I kept looking at all those casting directors and thinking, ‘You should never wear plaid.’ I was never intimidated by that kind of garbage, because I knew I was as good as anything else coming down the pike. I could sing. I could read lines” (21).

  In New York City there are all kinds of theatrical opportunities. Bette soon found herself investigating some of the more avant-garde theater that was happening in Greenwich Village and other parts of the city. “There were a lot of people doing exciting things then,” she remembers. “I got a great deal of my early inspiration from Charles Ludlam. The first thing I ever saw him do was Turds in Hell, which blew me away. It was the most incredible piece of theater I had ever seen. And there was this chick in the show who was really terrific. Her name was Black-Eyed Susan. She really inspired me” (25). In the production Black-Eyed Susan was totally outrageous, and in one scene she appeared onstage as the Statue of Liberty, wrapped in toilet paper and dollar bills. When Susan opened her mouth and began singing the song “Wheel of Fortune,” Bette was convinced that she could get up on stage and do a much better job vocally. Without abandoning her dream of breaking into Broadway productions, she began investigating the possibility of working in Off-Broadway shows and experimental theater productions, strictly for experience.

  Eventually, she landed a part in Tom Eyen’s production of Miss Nefertiti Regrets at the Cafe La Mama. She originally appeared in the chorus of the show in its initial run, but when the director saw Bette come alive onstage during a performance, she became Miss Nefertiti in the revival. She was quite a sight in her blonde wig, high heels, and a bikini!

  The summer of 1966 was spent in what is known as the Borscht Belt, in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. It was there that she appeared in stage shows in resort hotels, including Brickman’s. When she returned to New York City in the fall, she was cast in Eyen’s next production, Cinderella Revisited. During the afternoon the cast would perform the fairy tale classic Cinderella, and in the evening they would spice it up for the adults and call it Sinderella. Again, Bette had the title role—playing an “ugly duckling” whose wildest dreams came true. It wasn’t long before life was due to imitate art for her.

  During this same time period, one of the hottest shows on Broadway was Fiddler on the Roof. It opened in 1964 and ran for seven years. In fact, at one point, when it hit 3,242 performances, it was the longest-running show on Broadway at that time. Due to the large cast and chorus, there were constant cast changes and periodic “open calls” where anyone could audition, whether they were members of Actor’s Equity or not. Bette went to several of the open auditions in an attempt to break into Broadway and become the big star of stage that she longed to be.

  Finally, after several auditions, in 1966 she landed a small part in Fiddler on the Roof, in the chorus. According to Bette, “EVENTUALLY, I got into Fiddler as a chorus girl, after about a whole year of auditioning on and off.” Although she didn’t have a specific role all her own, she was ecstatic: “I was actually on stage!” (25).

  Set in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Russia, Fiddler on the Roof centers around a poor Jewish milkman named Tevya; his wife, Golde; and their daughters. His eldest daughter, Tzeitel, falls in love with a poor tailor named Motel. She wants to marry him instead of having an arranged marriage to someone else. The second daughter, Hodel, announces that she is going to marry Perchik, an idealistic revolutionary—without permission. And the third daughter, Chava, scandalously takes up with a man named Fyedka, who is a Christian. In the context of the musical, Tevya has several comical conversations with God, about his family and the decisions he is called upon to make. The story is about anti-Semitism, tradition, and how the world happens to be changing around them—all set to music.

  “When I was in the chorus,” Bette explains, “I understudied the part of Tzeitel, and when the part opened, [director] Jerry Robbins had to see all the girls up for it, but the lady who was casting didn’t want me to have the job. She called me up two hours before the audition, and said I didn’t have a prayer. But if I didn’t go in, she said, I could have the chorus job back” (11).

  Bette, who had found the original chorus job to be a temporary assignment, was dying to get back into the show, so she decided to gamble. According to her, “I at least wanted to get a look at Robbins—I worship the ground he dances upon—so I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m taking the audition!’ ” (11). She was cast in the part, and she stayed in Fiddler on the Roof for three years as Tzeitel, the eldest of the three daughters in the family. During those three years, the roles of the other two sisters were played by several actresses who also had their sights on bigger things. Among the girls to play Bette’s sisters were Adrienne Barbeau and Pia Zadora.

  “I was really good in Fiddler for the first two years,” says Bette. “But in the third year I came to a screeching halt. There I was in the third year, working for the same money I made in the first, breaking my ass, and feeling miserable because I couldn’t get into agents’ offices. And when they would send me out for auditions, the people wouldn’t like the way I looked, or the way I sounded. I couldn’t make them understand that there was really something there” (25).

  “I saw it wasn’t going to be the way I thought it was going to be,” she continues. “I wanted to work a lot, to grow, and the theater is a closed market. I couldn’t get anything else, and the way I was brought up, I was taught you must work. But I came to New York to have a career, not to be in one show, so at the end of the second year, I thought, ‘Time to move,’ and I had a bunch of experiences that related to that move. I was getting very high, and I was with people who were brilliant, and they were flashing things across my brain. I was getting freaked out on everything that was going on” (3).

  When tragedies
strike, weak people often crumble, while strong people look inside themselves for courage and emerge with an even stronger will to survive. It was during Bette’s third year in Fiddler on the Roof that the Midler family suffered a horrible loss, and it was Bette who had to remain a tower of strength.

  Bette’s eldest sister, Judy, like Bette before her, had left Honolulu to pursue her career aspirations. Judy moved to San Francisco, where, according to Bette, “She was studying to become a moviemaker” (14). That year Judy came to New York City to see Bette—her younger sister, the Broadway star. In a bizarre twist-of-fate accident, Judy was in the heart of the theater district when she was hit by a speeding car and killed.

  It was Bette who had to telephone Hawaii to notify her family. Her sister Susan remembers answering the call. “I gave the phone to my father,” she recalls. “Bette spoke to him first, and then it was passed around to all of us. It was a nightmare. I don’t think my mother ever got over it” (13).

  “It was very bad losing Judy,” Fred Midler recalled. “As I understand it, an auto came out of one of these indoor garages and smashed her right up against the wall. Mutilated her completely. The funeral directors wouldn’t even permit us to view the body” (13).