Bette Midler (31 page)

The atmosphere on the set had deteriorated to the point where Bette dreaded going to work every morning. “It was an enormously painful experience, but it was pain about something as trivial as a movie. A movie is basically a piece of fluff and entertainment.”

She began to break down. “Every day, every morning toward the end, I felt I was holding on for dear life. I would wake up with heart palpitations. And sometimes, in the middle of the night, I would wake up, not screaming but not being able to breathe. I would just wake up with a shudder and have to pound my back or chest to catch my breath. On the set, it was as though a wall had come between them and me. I kept thinking, ‘If I can just get through one more day, one more day of having to face them and their awful hatred—or if it wasn’t hatred, indifference.’ Every day I walked between those walls feeling complete alienated and alone and worthless” (
30
).

After the filming was completed, Bette continued in a downward spiral. “I had a terrible nervous breakdown,” she later admitted. “I was sick for a good three months. I was very, very ill. And I started to see a doctor because it was just too much for me to deal with by myself. . . . I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t get out of bed. I just cried for weeks on end. And anything would set me off. I couldn’t control myself. I had just been so attacked, and so humiliated. It was as though they wanted to destroy me, and I couldn’t understand what I had done” (
88
).

In the September 15, 1981, issue of
Variety
, in Army Archerd’s column, Siegel stated that Bette demanded “twenty to twenty-five takes and print four or five.” However, a United Artists interoffice memo dated September 18, 1981, addressed to Anthea Sylbert from Dennis A. Brown, tells a very different story. It stated that the “average number of takes” was 2.7, with 1.3 printed takes. The memo also went on to conclude, “All of which means that over a third of all the scenes with Bette were done in only one or two takes and over half were done in
three or less takes, while only five percent took more than nine takes. Only one take with Bette (or with anyone, for that matter) took more than fifteen takes and that was scene 99, which took twenty-one takes and involved the cat” (
96
).

While Bette spent the rest of the year recovering from her nervous breakdown, United Artists was sorting through the footage of
Jinxed
and trying to figure out what to do with it. According to Siegel, he turned in three different versions of the picture, each with a completely different ending. United Artists also went on to edit the film even further. According to Siegel, “There was a marvelous scene in which Rip Torn breaks down and says he’s sorry for how he treated her. He was just marvelous. I was told to take it out. I refused. They felt it worked against Miss Midler. She’s wrong. The better he is, the better she is. She had another marvelous scene. They’re living in a trailer; she’s threatening to leave, they took that out, to my astonishment. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to go through things like that. I know Midler wasn’t pleased with the way she looked. I think [cinematographer Vilmos] Zsigmond did a very good job with her. Considering all we went through, it’s miraculous the movie turned out as well as it did” (
95
).

She later sympathetically said of
Jinxed
, “I don’t think it was that bad a picture. He [Siegel] actually cut it quite sensitively. Even though he didn’t like me, he didn’t make me look bad” (
97
).

Recalled Siegel, he turned in three different versions of
Jinxed
, each with a slightly different ending: “The one I liked was the longest. She leaves her boyfriend, sings a song and goes out in a blaze of glory in a remarkable sunrise-sunset shot by Vilmos Zsigmond” (
95
).

On a upbeat note, Bette Midler got to sing a bit of country music in
Jinxed
, which never appeared on record. As she explained, “We sing ‘Cowgirl’s Dream’ which is out of Snuff Garrett’s office. It was written by Cliff Crawford and John Durrell; that’s the opening song. And then there’s a whole little medley in the middle, which is just, you know,
en passant
, because the plot comes during this number. But it’s cute, and it’s very Vegas-ey, with lots of fringe and rhinestones and balloons and stuff” (88.)

Critics were mixed on the results. It seemed that the best the
New York Times
could say about it was to call it “an entertaining jumble of a movie” (
98
). Yet the
Video Movie Guide 2001
found “Bette Midler in peak form as a would-be cabaret singer . . . (in) this often funny black
comedy. . . . If it weren’t for Midler, you’d notice how silly and unbelievable it all is” (
99
).

In the year between the completion of
Jinxed
and its release in October 1982, Bette recovered from her breakdown, got a new boyfriend, and began work on a new album. She was feeling well enough by early spring to virtually steal the entire Academy Awards telecast with just five minutes of time on screen.

Entering the stage in a low-cut and shiny gold gown and red-and-blue silk spangled scarves billowing from the sleeves, Bette beamed at the television cameras. “I guess you didn’t think it was possible to overdress for this affair,” she said. The audience roared with laughter. “So this is what it feels like to be up here. This is fantastic. I’ve been waiting for two years for the Academy to call me up and say they made a mistake! Don’t you hate it when presenters come out and use this moment for their own personal aggrandizement? This is the Oscars. We have to be as dignified as possible. That is why I have decided to rise to the occasion,” she said with her hands tugging her breasts upward with her hands. She then proceeded to present the award for the Best Original Song, complete with her own snide comments about each of the tunes. She was a sheer riot to watch, and all of the articles about the show made clamorous mention of her spontaneous and humorous performance. She was the hit of the show.

“That sure was fun,” she said later of her appearance on the Academy Awards. “And the feedback on it was extraordinary! I couldn’t have had more people call or wire or write or send flowers if I had actually won the damn thing!” (
88
).

Jinxed
landed on the movie marketplace the following fall with a resounding thud. The posters for the film carried the headline, “This tootsie’s on a roll!” Well, she gambled, and she certainly rolled anything but “sevens.” The majority of the critics hated it and were unable to tell whether the film was a comedy, a tragedy, a spoof, a love story, or none of the above. The review Bette received in the
Hollywood Reporter
was among the most sympathetic: “
Jinxed
actually isn’t cursed as much as it is wildly uneven. . . . Midler’s screen Opus No. Three falls far short of its two predecessors in coherency, importance and impact, but still imparts enough breezy entertainment value to doubtless gather partisans to its cause” (
8
).

What it did fail to find was an audience. Less than three weeks into
its release, the ticket sales were already dwindling. The film reportedly lost United Artists $20 million.

This was the beginning of one of Bette’s bluest periods. In the movie business you are only as big as your latest hit or as small as your latest bomb. “Nobody wanted to hire me,” recalls Midler (
100
). Suddenly, word spread that Bette’s temperamental displays on the set of
Jinxed
had ruined United Artists and left it broke. In 1980 she was an Academy Award-nominated superstar. In 1982 she was labeled “production poison” in the film industry.

In 1982 Bette had strengthened her ties to the West Coast by purchasing a large Hollywood home in Coldwater Canyon. The Midler mansion was designed in a Mexican style, with high ceilings, windows with cut glass, and a huge fireplace. Over the fireplace hung a portrait of silent film star Mary Pickford.

According to Bette, she liked to gaze up at that particular sad-eyed portrait and ponder. “She had all that money and she was miserable! That’s why I schlepped up to the auction at Pickfair and bought that picture. It slayed me to think that this woman would have had the world by the short hairs and still would have been so unhappy. Every time I look at it, I think, ‘There but for the grace of God’ . . . And in fact, I’m sure I may end up that way yet” (
88
).

Since her disastrous
Jinxed
experience, Bette had been dating and living with a man by the name of Benoit Gautier. It was Gautier with whom she had an affair in Paris in 1974.

Speaking about him, Bette explained in the summer of 1982, “Benoit I’ve been with, on and off, for about a year. We went to Europe together last fall. He’s a personal manager. He’s in
zee show biz-i-ness
. He manages Jon Anderson, who used to be the lead singer in Yes, who’s now on his own and is making those wonderful records with Vangelis. Beautiful symphonic pieces, long tone-poem things. But Benoit has a public relations firm in Paris. We see each other evenings, we have dinner together. It’s very traditional: nothing
‘kinqué.’
Calm, always calm,
because there’s so much of people screaming during the day, you really do need a chance to catch your breath” (
88
).

At that same point, Bette definitely nixed the idea of marriage. “Oh
nevair, NEV-AIR!
There’s community property in this state. I’m not giving away one nickel,” she stressed (
88
).

Now it was time to piece her career back together. This started in the summer of 1982 when she began working on her ninth album, to be entitled
No Frills
. Since she had documented her 1970s stage act in the HBO special and in
Divine Madness
, Bette felt that it was time to move on to something new musically, something between the cabaret campiness of her early albums and the screaming rock & roll belting of the Rose.

It was time to bid the past a fond farewell and move on. Bette decided to concentrate on rock and ballads with synthesizers and no embellishments. “Because that’s exactly what it is,” she explained of the title of the album
No Frills
. “It’s music with no strings and no horns. It’s bare-bones music, as unpretentious as it can be. Just stark. But I’m enjoying this album more than any other I’ve ever made. I haven’t stopped laughing since I started making this record, because the people I’m working with are fabulous, funny, silly, silly people. Danny Goldberg is executive producer. Chuck Plotkin is producing, Toby Scott is the engineer, and Brock Walsh is the musical director. I’ve never been silly about my records” (
30
).

Bette was very optimistic about her
No Frills
album. She hoped that the ballad “All I Need to Know” would turn out to be a hit on the order of “The Rose.” She recorded the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden,” Marshall Crenshaw’s melodic “Favorite Waste of Time,” and the electronic techno-pop song “Is It Love?” She also composed a song with Jerry Blatt and Brock Walsh called “Come Back, Jimmy Dean.” Although she and Cher were no longer close buddies—for some unexplained reason—it seemed odd that Bette would write a song with this title and subject matter, as Cher was concurrently starring on Broadway in the show
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
.

Several of the songs on this album she found by listening to an endless stack of “demo” tapes submitted for her consideration. Of the ’80s music scene, she explained, “I know what’s going on—I listen to the ‘greats’ and the ‘near-greats.’ I do. I know what synthesizers are! You know, I’m an up-to-date kinda of gal. I like that song ‘Is It Love?” I
couldn’t resist it when I heard it. Actually, that was one of the two thousand tapes that I got that someone had sent me—it’s a Nick Gilder song. I chose it out of that great big pile” (
94
).

“I found some great songs. I found a little group from Wichita, Kansas. . . . what was the name of that band? It was an all-girls band and they had the strangest songs. But I couldn’t get ahold of them, so I couldn’t cut the songs. They didn’t have a phone, they didn’t have a manager. I had this tape in this pile of two thousand. They had songs like ‘Alien Love.’ I mean, those songs are really out-to-lunch. They were fourteen years old—these little girls had written these songs. They were very young. I did flirt with the idea of cranking out a teeny bopper album. But I’m really not that. You have a face up to that” (
94
).

She spent a year gathering and recording new material for the album. She went to the Greek Theater in Los Angeles one night to see Marshall Crenshaw, who was the opening act for Joe Jackson. From her meeting with Crenshaw, she came away with the song “My Favorite Waste of Time.”

Three singles were pulled from the
No Frills
album: “All I Need to Know,” “My Favorite Waste of Time,” and “Beast of Burden.” Unfortunately, none of the singles became big hits, nor did the album itself go far on the record charts. Bette’s version of “All I Need to Know” made it to Number 77 on the
Billboard
singles chart. Ironically, when it was rerecorded in 1989 by Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville—under the title “Don’t Know Much”—it went to Number 2 and revived both Ronstadt’s and Neville’s recording careers. Bette’s recording of “My Favorite Waste of Time” made it to Number 78 on the charts in 1983, and “Beast of Burden” peaked at Number 71. The
No Frills
album itself only made it as far as Number 60 in America.