by Mark Bego
After four months, in the spring of 1976, “The Depression Tour” came to its final destination: Caesar’s Palace, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The gig was great for earning quick cash, but it seemed that no one in the Vegas audience had any idea who on earth Midler was or what her unique sense of humor was all about. In a town where moderately talented TV stars were big draws, Bette’s witty humor was lost on the crowds. According to Bruce Vilanch, the only segment of the show that went over well was “The Vicki Eydie Show,” which was assumed to be presented in total seriousness.
One night backstage during the Vegas engagement, word circulated among the troupe that The Fabulous Bette Midler Show was going to debut on June 19 on HBO as a television show, and that a “live” album had also been recorded, and that no one but Bette and Aaron were going to receive one cent of extra pay for either project. Well, it was like Mutiny on the Bounty in Vegas that particular evening. The Harlettes and the entire band threatened to walk out on the next show if the situation wasn’t resolved. Somehow a settlement was reached, but the episode did nothing to improve Bette’s relationship with her band, with her singers, or with Aaron.
Fortunately, when the Cleveland concert was broadcast on HBO as The Fabulous Bette Midler Show, it was a roaring success. Whatever disenchantment the Songs for the New Depression album had created with her fans and her critics, the TV special quickly eclipsed.
Since the beginning of “The Depression Tour,” Bette had lost her appendix, flashed two audiences, been banned from three hundred RKO radio stations, seen her band arrested, released a “bomb” album, lost her confidence, and regained her composure. Was she upset? To sum it all up in her own words: “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke!”
10
THE BUMPY ROAD BACK TO THE TOP
The next two years for Bette Midler were highlighted with several peaks and marred by several disappointing valleys. On the positive side of things, she fell in love with an actor, starred in an Emmy Award-winning TV special, released a critically successful live album, and embarked on a sold-out global concert tour. On the negative side, the Harlettes left her for their own career as a trio, she released her poorest-selling studio album to date, her rented house in Los Angeles was robbed, and Aaron drove her crazier than ever before.
It was that same year that Bette admitted publicly that what she wanted most in the world was to become a movie star. Many of her most famous songs, especially “Hello in There,” “Delta Dawn,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” and “Superstar,” were essentially acting pieces set to music. According to her, “I have definite feelings about the songs I sing and I try to convey that to my audiences. Like ‘Do You Want to Dance?’—most singers wouldn’t have sung it the way I did, making people think of Saturday night dances” (8). Since her stage show was filled with characters like Vicki Eydie and Nanette, the bag lady, why not go all the way with acting?
“I’d like to become a great actress—there, it’s out!” she declared during “The Depression Tour.” “I started that way, you know. I studied with [Lee] Strasberg—I didn’t understand a blinking thing! They had no sense of humor—and I’ve learned a lot since. I’d like to do a comedy full of whimsy. I’d like to make a perfect comedy, the perfect musical, the perfect melodrama. Anything less than that will be dissatisfying. I’d like to do a classic, sure, I can take direction: that’s not the hard part. The hard part is figuring out yourself, being able to churn up all those instincts and make it yourself” (54).
In an effort to move her career into more artistically challenging areas, Bette held a press conference to announce that her next project would show off more than just her self-proclaimed “brains, talent, and gorgeous tits.” It was going to show off her taste and refinement as well. Bette heralded the fact that she was going to sing and dance with the New York City Ballet in its upcoming production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s light opera The Seven Deadly Sins.
The production got under way on schedule in early 1977. Bette was already involved in rehearsals. The ballet’s famed director, George Balanchine, had posed for several promotional portraits with Bette, which were photographed by Richard Avedon. Unfortunately, a strike by the Ballet Musicians’ Union put the whole event on ice. The strike dragged on, and Bette became entrenched in two new projects that took precedence. Recording her next album and taping her years-in-the-planning network TV special caused scheduling conflicts, and, unfortunately, Bette’s ballet debut was never rescheduled.
For more than three years ABC-TV had tried to come to satisfactory creative terms for a Midler special, and still no plan had been agreed upon. Finally, Aaron worked out a mutually agreeable plan of action with NBC, and Bette began rehearsals for Ol’ Red Hair Is Back, which was to begin taping in California in May of 1977.
Meanwhile, Bette had fallen madly in love with a young actor named Peter Riegert. She had gone out one night in New York City to see the Off-Broadway show Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and Peter was in it. (The play was later made into the 1986 film About Last Night.) Bette visited Riegert backstage after the performance, and, according to her, she was immediately attracted to him. “There was this guy with this beautiful face and this great body and these gorgeous eyes and this wonderful manner,” she recalls (71).
“ ‘Well, let’s just go out for a little drinkie, what do you say?’ ” Bette asked Peter. “So we got drunk and I asked him if he was listed, ’cause I’d like to call him up. Sometimes I think I’m turning into a man, and it scares me!” she exclaimed (71).
They hit it off immediately. They both loved to go out and see old movies and act silly with each other. The relationship was just what she needed. It took away a lot of the pressure of being an unapproachable “star.” With Peter, she could just act like an eccentric girl in love.
Peter genuinely cared about Bette, and even the Harlettes commented that whenever he was around Midler, she seemed calmer and more centered. On top of that, he understood the insanity of life in show business. He was later to find fame of his own in the cult comedy film Animal House, as Boon, the fraternity social chairman. Although their love affair didn’t last forever, their friendship has, and in the 1990s, when Bette starred in a new filmed version of Gypsy, she cast Peter in the role of Herbie, Mama Rose’s lover.
As their relationship was just beginning, Bette did her best not to show up at public functions with Peter, in an effort to keep her affair with him private. However, since they both lived in New York City, it wasn’t long before members of the fifth estate took note. Gossip columnist Liz Smith meant no harm when she casually mentioned to her daily newspaper column that Bette and Peter were dating. It was just another gossip item to Liz, but Bette saw it as an invasion of privacy and none of the public’s business.
Bette was so worked up about it that she picked up the phone, dialed Liz Smith’s number, and let the journalist have a piece of her mind. Said Midler, “I think my WORK is important! The cult of personality has exploded and it keeps people from knowing the real artist through the one reality—their work or their art. People should be interested in ideas rather than in a performer’s private life. So I think people have their priorities all screwed up. I want to be known, evaluated, judged from my work alone. What I do otherwise is nobody’s business!” (72).
“Let’s be realistic,” she continued on the subject, “I don’t think the public is craving to know who I sleep with or what I ate for breakfast. My God, look at Cher. She can’t even break a nail without having to give an interview about it. That stuff takes all the mystery away. I mean, it whittles your heroes down to nothing, doesn’t it?” (72).
Said Liz Smith in retaliation, “When a performer goes up to accept an award at Harvard and flashes a bare backside at the boys, or says vulgar things on [her] Home Box Office concert, it naturally gets them and their giant talents talked about. And then people want to know more about their inside story and the way they live off stage” (72).
Since the cat was already out
of the bag, it wasn’t long before Bette began to discuss the details of her affair with Riegert openly. According to her at that time, “Peter is the first man I’ve really felt this way about—been able to be myself with. I’ve got all these crazy characters living inside of me, and I always have to act them out. Most people think I’m nuts. Not Peter. He has his own set of characters. We give each other a show every night till we collapse about four in the morning. It’s great!” (17).
That February, after years of putting down Los Angeles, Bette decided to give the West Coast a try. In May of 1977 she appeared on a Bing Crosby TV special, and she sang a standout version of “Glow Worm,” on which she was joined by the Mills Brothers. Reportedly, even her father tuned in to see her in that particular show. It was one of the only occasions Fred Midler saw his daughter perform. After all, he figured, how obscene could she be on the same stage with Bing Crosby?
In its April 1977 Album Reviews bulletin, sent out to the press, Atlantic Records announced the release of Bette’s fourth album, the two-record set Live at Last, which was taped in concert the year before at the Cleveland Music Hall. According to the press release, “The new double live set is the necessary step in her recorded career—bridging the gap between studio and stage” (73). However, several sources confirm that many of Bette’s vocal performances on this album were rerecorded in the studio to make them sound closer to the studio-quality performances of her previous albums. Hence, on the back of the album jacket appear the words “produced by Lew Hahn” and “remote recording produced by Arif Mardin.” Atlantic Records was taking no chances with this album. It was, as Atlantic had hoped, a critical hit, and it did enter the Top 40 album charts, at Number 49, but it wasn’t the million-selling smash Atlantic had aimed for.
The album contained a newly recorded nonconcert song called “You’re Moving Out Today,” written by Bette and Carol Bayer Sager. The song is about Midler asking her boyfriend to pack his things up and leave her life. She sings it in an odd little Betty Boop-like voice, which doesn’t sound like her at all. It was ironic that Bette was now writing songs with Carol, since Carol had co-written most of the songs with Melissa Manchester on Melissa’s 1973 debut album Home to Myself. It was also a strange twist of fate that by 1977, both Barry Manilow and Melissa Manchester each had scored huge hits on the record charts (“I Write the Songs” and “Midnight Blue,” respectively), yet Bette, who was considered a bigger star, was still trying unsuccessfully to produce a hit record.
According to one inside source, the only reason that “Bang, You’re Dead” appears on Bette’s Live at Last album was because Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson had threatened to give the song to someone else if Midler didn’t hurry up and release it. It was a last-minute addition to the album, and it replaced “I Sold My Heart to the Junkman” on the LP. “Junkman” appears on the videotape of the HBO special; “Bang” does not.
What the Live at Last album did accomplish was to reestablish Bette’s image as a live concert performer par excellence. It was a testament to her enormous dexterity as an onstage singer, actress, and stand-up comedian. Even the usually snide Village Voice admitted, “This double album catches Bette at the best—when she is working a crowd, milking it for laughter, delight, and applause. . . . her singing here has a limpid, liquid quality that never made it onto her previous recordings. She sounds spontaneous—eager and breathless” (74).
Live at Last contains most of the songs that made Midler famous—like “Friends,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” and “Delta Dawn,” Bette also sang several songs that were unique to this album. They include her version of the Supremes’ “Up the Ladder to the Roof,” the sexual entendre–filled “Long John Blues,” and Neil Young’s “Birds.” “Long John Blues” is actually an overtly lewd and wickedly amusing song about a dentist with a very large “tool” made for filling a “cavity” in need of attention, which Bette successfully milked for laughs. In addition to the songs and intermittent patter, the album also features some of Midler’s comedy bits, including her raunchy Sophie Tucker jokes and her own trademark stand-up routine, labeled here as “Comic Relief.” The inclusion of “Up the Ladder to the Roof” was obviously an outgrowth of her attempts at recording several songs for her aborted Bette Does Motown album.
Also captured on this record are two of her acting vignettes, in which she portrays different characters to embody some of her songs. “The Vicki Eydie Show” gave her the platform to perform a global cavalcade of “cheese”—including “Around the World,” “Hawaiian War Chant,” and “Istanbul.” For her sad and downtrodden tunes, Midler portrayed a character she called “Nanette,” a bag lady whose life somehow eclipsed her sense of reality. As Nanette—the crazy lady with a fried egg on her head—Bette brought to life her songs “Mr. Rockefeller,” “Ready to Begin Again,” and a bittersweet version of “Do You Want to Dance?”
Live at Last is part concert, part mini-Broadway musical, part stand-up comedy, and 100 percent Midler. The one totally studio-recorded cut on the album, the quirky “You’re Moving Out Today,” is presented at the end of the first disc as a musical “Intermission” between acts. So much more than just a musical concert performer, the album clearly captures Miss M in transition to becoming an actress who sings—as opposed to being a singer who acts.
It was clear by this point that Bette Midler was one of the most critically lauded and original performers of the 1970s. The Los Angeles Times proclaimed that “Midler shows more range and vision on stage than either Barbra Streisand or Liza Minnelli,” and People magazine glowed: “She is a showplace of exhausting versatility, singing, dancing: she brings S.R.O. houses to their feet night after night” (8). However, the biggest problem facing her career was the inconsistent quality of the projects, songs, and showcases she chose to show off her talents.
The one single that was released off Live at Last was the studio-recorded cut “You’re Moving Out Today.” It was the song that Bette wrote with Carole Bayer Sager—together with Bruce Roberts. Sager’s record company decided that the song would also be a great single for her. For whatever reason, both singles were released at the exact same time. Bette had the biggest hit—at Number 42 in America—while Sager had the bigger hit in England, at Number 6, as well as in Australia. Sager’s version of the song peaked at Number 69 in the United States. Carole’s version of the song was produced by Brooks Arthur, and Bette had Tom Dowd producing her version of the song. Bette was friends with Carole and not only co-wrote “You’re Moving Out Today” with her, but can also be heard on the 1977 Carole Bayer Sager album. Midler sings a featured solo on the song “Shy As a Violet” and provides background “harmony” vocals, which were written by Sager and Peter Allen.
On September 18, 1977, Bette found herself in the uncomfortable position of headlining a gay rights rally gone awry. The so-called “Star Spangled Night for Rights” turned into one of Aaron Russo’s biggest fumbles.
In an effort to smooth over any bad blood between Bette and the gay audiences who had given her initial start on the road to stardom, Aaron used Bette’s name to enlist the services of several other big-name stars. Proceeds were to be donated to the San Francisco–based pro-gay rights organization Save Our Human Rights Foundation (SOHR). Unfortunately, the event cost over $200,000 to produce and barely cleared $100,000 for the cause. That $100,000 was to be held in escrow by another holding company called Star Spangled Night, Inc. In the confusion, several hundred tickets to the event went unsold by show time. Some Los Angeles–based gay organizations even boycotted the event. Such backstage intrigue notwithstanding, the real battle was waged onstage when the show began.
The event boasted a star-studded line-up that included comedians Lily Tomlin, David Steinberg, and Richard Pryor; singer Tom Waits; rock groups War and Aalon; actor Christopher Lee; ballet dancers Johanna Kirkland and John Clifford; the Hollywood Festival Orchestra, and, finally, Bette as the closing attraction. The evening was long and slow moving, and by the time Richa
rd Pryor took the stage, the audience was restless. Pryor began his directionless monologue by complaining that none of the other performers had admitted to personal homosexual experiences. After discussing his own experimentation in the early 1950s, his remarks became increasingly hostile.
“We’ve got a lot of faggots in the ghetto, but not a single homosexual. Niggers don’t want nothing to do with homosexuality,” he contended. After several minutes of antigay comments, Pryor shouted at the hecklers he was inciting, “Kiss my happy rich black ass!” (75). With that, he stormed off the stage to a sea of “boos” from the crowd.
An apologetic Russo took the microphone and was promptly booed off the stage. Likewise, whiskey-voiced blues singer Tom Waits was jeered and booed while the stage was hastily prepared for Bette’s entrance. She had no idea what she was about to walk into the middle of: a hostile crowd with no sense of humor.
According to Bette: “I was in my dressing room, running lines with the PA system turned off. I had no idea that anything unusual was happening until one of the Harlettes came back and told me that Richard Pryor had walked off the stage and told the audience to kiss his ‘rich black ass.’ ‘Hmmmmm,’ I thought, ‘that’s interesting. I’ve said worse than that to a lot of folks.’ And so, not grasping the context in which he’s said it, I went on stage and said, ‘Who’d like to kiss my rich white ass?’ I sensed right away that something else was going on out there besides me . . . something scary. Still I really didn’t have any idea of how deeply Pryor had offended the audience until after the show when somebody described to me what had happened, and then I went into shock, too” (67).