Bette Midler (27 page)

According to Bette, her lowest point came during the 1978 world tour, on which Aaron accompanied her. “I used to do shows,” she explained, “and no matter how good they were, it didn’t matter until HE told me it was okay. And he used to withhold this approbation from me all the time. THAT game. And that’s a real horrible mind-fuck to get into. I was pretty messed up there for a long time. I don’t know why—emotional retardation, I guess. He was the only one I trusted. I started out with a lot of people around me and eventually they all left, and I
was alone with Aaron. I knew that if I didn’t get out at that point, I would never be happy again” (
8
).

In May 1979, Bette appeared as the musical guest on the TV show
Saturday Night Live
. She sang her latest song, the Top 40 hit “Married Men,” and a song by Tom Waits about lost love, called “Martha,” which was never released on record. By the time she finished singing the Waits ballad, tears were running down her cheeks. She later explained, “That song calls up a lot of deep things for me. That night of the show, I was thinking about my mom” (
8
).

In September, Bette released her first album since breaking loose from Aaron Russo. At long last she had recorded an album that matched the fun, the emotion, the excitement, and the total listenability of her first two LPs. The album, which was produced by Arif Mardin, was entitled
Thighs and Whispers
, and it drew immediate critical acclaim.
Stereo Review
proclaimed that “her wonderful new Atlantic album . . . certainly shows that she hasn’t forgotten any of her old tricks.” And
Billboard
announced that “Midler covers a lot of ground. . . . [she] has been searching for her niche on record since her big initial success with
The Divine Miss M
in 1973, and she may have found it in the sheer diversity of this package” (
8
).

However, Steven Holden, in the
Village Voice
, hated the album—a lot. According to his review, “Midler’s latest studio album teams her with Arif Mardin, whose elegant pop-soul arrangements obviously scared her to pieces. Though for a change she stays on pitch most of the time, this hard-won precision requires a near-total sacrifice of personality. The best cut, ‘Big Noise from Winnetka,’ is an arranger’s showpiece. The worst, Johnny Bristol’s ‘Hang On in There, Baby,’ has Midler sounding like a luded-out Donna Summer, her voice a frightened mew in a swamp of production” (
90
). Oh well, you can’t please everyone.

However, if you loved this album, you really loved it. The highlights on
Thighs and Whispers
include the rousing ’40s swing number “Big Noise from Winnetka,” which was borrowed from Bob Crosby & the Bobcats. This was the perfect song to rekindle Midler’s association with the songs of the 1940s swing era. Her background vocals were fittingly provided by three of her Harlettes: Ula Hedwig, Robin Grean, and Merle Miller.

James Taylor’s “Millwork,” from the Broadway show
Working
, was a real treat. Bette took this song and gave it the same kind of slow and pensive treatment that she gave to “Hello in There.” On this song she
brings to life a character who is singing of her sad and dismal life, working at a mill, day after monotonous day. With just a simple piano and cello behind her, this is one of Midler’s most touching vocal performances.

“Cradle Days,” which was written by Aaron Neville, gave Miss M a great, torchy rhythm & blues song, singing about the love of her life. After recording so many pristine and smoothly produced songs in recent years, on this one she delivers a nice, occasionally ragged torch performance. The backgrounds here are provided by Luther Vandross, disco singer Ullanda McCullough, and Diva Gray—on her way to becoming a Harlette.

The outrageously tongue-in-cheek “My Knight in Black Leather” was just the kind of silliness that Bette’s last two studio albums lacked. It is the Divine Miss M here, singing to a disco beat, of falling in love with a hunk in black leather who “smelled just like a new car.” This totally crazy disco number was understandably a huge hit in discotheques in 1979, which was the absolute height of disco mania. With a chorus of background singers, including Luther and Ula, Midler unleashes her strong belting voice. This song was a smash at Studio 54.

Bette’s seductive “Hang On in There, Baby” is the Bette’s disco homage to Johnny Bristol’s 1974 hit. She gives the song the same sexy come-on that “Do You Want to Dance?” possessed.

Again trying her hand at songwriting, this time with Randy Kerber, Midler penned the song “Hurricane.” A song about love, “Hurricane” features the diva singing, “you blow me away,” with an ethereal choir, to a sweeping disco beat. Her version of the Dr. John (Mac Rebenack) composition “Rain” emerged as an arty jazz blues ballad.

Finally, the album ends with Bette’s comic version of the song “Married Men,” which is another disco-ized spree. On the comic dance song, Midler sings of her advice about the pitfalls of dating philandering married men who are never going to divorce their wives.

Thighs and Whispers
was a lively and excellently recorded album, and Bette was finally on the right track musically. It peaked at Number 65 on the
Billboard
chart, as compared with
Broken Blossom
having made it to Number 51. Although it wasn’t a huge seller,
Thighs and Whispers
did win a German Record Award as 1979’s best international album, and it won an avalanche of critical acclaim that
Broken Blossom
and
Songs for the New Depression
had failed to draw.

Bette herself was quite pleased with
Thighs and Whispers
. According
to her, “People say it’s the best thing I’ve done in a long time and that’s gratifying. I really do love the ballads. For someone like me, they keep you alive. I think ‘Cradle Days’ is one is one of the best things I ever did. I love old tunes and disco and rock, but ballads really are the key to my soul” (
85
).

In the summer of 1979, Bette went back to Europe for a brief tour and then a one-shot American concert tour that took her into autumn. Billed as
Bette! Divine Madness
, the show was a preparation for a Broadway opening on December 5 at the Majestic Theater. Her engagements in San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Detroit were all successful, especially teamed with the advance word on
The Rose
as a tour de force for Miss M. Her Harlettes for this tour were Linda Hart, Frannie Eisenberg, and Paulette McWilliams (who had replaced Katie Sagal).

One night onstage in Detroit, the ever-unpredictable Bette spontaneously showed more of herself than usual. She had done the encore number, and the crowd was still clamoring for more. Midler was already in her dressing room, wrapped in a towel, when Jerry Blatt came and knocked on her door to tell her to come out onstage again. Jerry half jokingly said to Bette as she walked into the wings, “Please, whatever you do, don’t flash them” (
16
). That was all the encouragement that she needed!

The date was November 6, 1979. The place was the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City. The event was the world premiere of
The Rose
. And the opening night party was—where else?—the Roseland Ballroom. Said the newly blond Miss M, “It was the most exciting opening I’ve ever been to, and I’ve been to a few. Thank God, this one was mine!” (
91
).

The film tracks the last year in the life of a flamboyant rock & roll star. Through a haze of booze and drugs, the Rose (Bette Midler) fights with her tyrannical manager Rudge (Alan Bates), desperately clings to a male lover (Frederic Forrest), confronts a former female lover, tries in vain to reconcile with her parents, and comes up emotionally empty-handed on all fronts. In the final scene she ODs on stage, drowning in a sea of misery.

The opening-night premiere and party in New York City was used to raise funds for the famed drug-rehabilitation organization Phoenix
House. “It’s such a good cause,” remarked Midler that night. “I only wish the opening-night party in Los Angeles was for Alcoholics Anonymous. That would be PERFECT!” (
92
).

The benefit raised $60,000 for Phoenix House. According to the president of the organization, Dr. Mitchell S. Rosenthal, “We’re happy to be connected with
The Rose
because I think the film shows how people who get caught up in drugs are in as much pain as they are. Drugs have been glorified in show business and in rock, and this film punctuates that.” (
92
).

A couple of ironies punctuated the night, however. At the party, several darkened corners of Roseland reeked of marijuana smoke, and the antidrug fundraising was hosted by none other than automotive industry czar John DeLorean, whose own cocaine troubles were later to become headline news.

The ballroom of Roseland was decorated that night with three thousand real roses, imported from Michigan. But the starring flower that evening was Bette herself. She was resplendent in a strapless black lace dress, a $2,500,000 diamond necklace, her golden locks—which she referred to as being “Venetian blond”—and her nouveau svelte figure. She had lost twenty pounds for her transition to movie star. According to her, she accomplished the weight loss by living on liquid protein. “It came in these plastic bottles that looked just like Janitor-in-a-Drum [liquid cleaning soap]. It tasted like it, too!” she laughed (
89
).

Her date for the premiere and the party afterward was her current boyfriend, Peter Riegert. Speaking to the press about her love life, she stated at the time, “I’ve been lucky in love lately. I think I’ve been lucky in that I’ve experienced all kinds of men, and I’ve learned a lot about the way human beings are with one another. So that in part, I’ve been lucky. But there has been a certain amount of pain, too” (
86
).

The following night the West Coast Premiere was held in Los Angeles at the Plitt Century Plaza Theater, and a party was given at the Century Plaza Hotel. The benefit premiere raised $130,000 for the Los Angeles International Film Exposition. The star-studded crowd that gathered that evening included Raquel Welch, Nick Nolte, Jacqueline Bisset, Milton Berle, Hugh Hefner, and Bette’s former musical mates Melissa Manchester and Barry Manilow.

The reviews and—even better—the crowds that
The Rose
drew were phenomenal. Bette was an instant hit in the film role. The reception to her acting was so overwhelmingly good that everyone wondered what
took so long to get her up on the big screen! She truly threw herself into the demanding role of the Rose and obviously released gallons of pent-up emotional venom on the characterization. She was able to act out her resentment toward Aaron Russo in the scenes where Rose battles her fictional manager, Rudge. She also, very poignantly and painfully, brought to life her frustration with her parents and her lifelong unsuccessful struggle to create a rapport with her father.

One of the most emotionally devastating scenes in the film shows Bette in a phone booth before the final concert. Forlorn, pathetic, and frantic for the helping hand that she needs so desperately, Rose telephones her parents in a last attempt at communication, only to find that they have nothing much to say to each other. It is one of the most depressing and draining scenes ever captured on film. The emotions were obviously real—as they were drawn from Bette’s own life. The scene ends up with the drugged-out Rose collapsing on stage and dying, without ever finding the kind of love and acceptance that she so desperately sought.

“It was very moving, the whole evening that we shot it was very moving . . . and then there was the memory that I used when I was doing. . . . whenever I see that clip it brings it all back. . . . To be honest, it was real,” Bette later admitted. “They took something very lovely out of that scene that really burned my ass, because I thought it was the most telling thing in the whole film. She [Rose] says, ‘What are you watching [on television]? . . . Oh, she’s good, I like her.’ Those two or three sentences told the whole story of the relationship between the mother and father and daughter. They’d prefer to watch somebody else, some other girl on the show. It’s so mystical, it makes me all misty-eyed” (
16
).

The telephone scene is very close to me,” she claimed (
86
). “I used to phone my parents every time something came up. Of course, being so far away from each other, everything always has a distance to it—you know, death, sickness. They used to not tell me a lot of stuff about sickness, and I never told them the bad parts. Until real desolation set in, like when my sister died. What happens when you leave home is you turn around to watch and see how your folks are doing, and they’re the same. I tried to say everything to my folks, but they never listened, they never asked for any daughterly advice. I told them to try to have a little more fun, but they couldn’t get themselves into that frame of mind. It
used to drive me mad, because I could see them wasting away before my eyes” (
8
).

When Fred Midler was reached in Hawaii for his comments on his daughter’s first starring movie role, it was clear that something wider than the Pacific Ocean separated Bette and her father. “I’m just not interested in that kind of entertainment,” he said. “Now I hear she’s in the movies, though. Something about Janet Joplin? I think she was some sort of rock singer. I don’t like to spend money and I think charging four or five dollars to see a movie is outrageous. But to see my own daughter . . . well, I guess I’ll splurge” (
15
). Reportedly, he never did go to the theater to see
The Rose
.