Bette Midler (3 page)

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 Melissa 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.