Bette Midler

by Mark Bego

  One of the most memorable things about the Broken Blossom album was the George Hurrell photograph of Bette on the cover. In 1930s Hollywood, Hurrell established himself as the hottest portrait photographer in the business. He had a reputation for turning attractive-looking actors into virtual gods and goddesses. His portraits of stars like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, and Jean Harlow are among the most glamorous photographs of the screen divas’ lives. How fitting that he should give the glam treatment to la diva Midler. It remains the most spellbinding and dazzling portrait of her career.

  However, the cover concept and the title of the album might have ended up a little different if Miss M had gone with her original idea. On the back of the album is another Hurrell photo of Midler—a body shot, with her bust prominently displayed. Explains Brooks Arthur, “You know the photo on the back of the album of her in a bra? She wanted to call the album So Many Mammaries!” (77).

  The playful girl-group campiness and poignant emotion of Bette’s first two albums were nowhere to be found on this disc. In an attempt to turn Midler into an accomplished 1970s chanteuse, it was too contained, homogenized, and restrained to ever find an audience—with the exception of her most die-hard fans. Although the Bessie Smith number and a rocking version of Sammy Hagar’s appropriate song “Red” showed off a rougher side of Midler, the disc missed its mark on all counts. The one single that was released off the album was the ballad “Storybook Children,” which made it to Number 57 on the Billboard magazine Pop Singles chart. The Broken Blossom album made it only to Number 51 in Billboard, signifying her slipping popularity with her once-strong record-buying audience. This was her third album in a row not to be certified Gold in the United States.

  Arthur Bell, in the Village Voice, had the opposite opinion. According to him, “Broken Blossom, her latest album, is her best, with hardly any camping, and yet it’s selling worst of all. But to ask that she stretch, expand, play it straight, is tantamount to suggesting that Muhammad Ali go on a parsley diet. As it stands, Bette is neither middle-of-the-road nor far left. She’s stuck in a soft shoulder” (78).

  According to Brooks Arthur, “ ‘Yellow Beach Umbrella’ could have been a hit. ‘Paradise’ could have been a hit. ‘La Vie En Rose’ could have been a great record overseas, but unfortunately, it was just one of those records. Everyone who I meet—and I’m baffled by this because it doesn’t have a lot of popularity—says, ‘Oh, Broken Blossom is my favorite Bette album!’ And I say, ‘Wow!’ But I dug in for those vocals, ‘cuz she gave them to me, and I was able to coax ever better ones out of her. And me being a singer, and having a sixth sense about singers, I was able to burn some great vocals together with Bette” (77). Unfortunately, Broken Blossom was not the hit album that everyone had hoped for. Had Aaron and Bette listened to Arthur’s advice with regard to “Someone That I Used to Love” and “Gee Whiz,” things might have turned out differently.

  While Bette was recording Broken Blossom with Brooks Arthur, they had a lot of fun together. Remembers Brooks, “I took her to a baseball game one time at Dodger Stadium, and I was telling Ahmet Ertegun that I am taking her to the Dodgers’ game, and I had box seats—the dugout box, and the security is great. I talked to the public relations office and had her name on the scoreboard: ‘Dodger Stadium Welcomes Bette Midler.’ Ahmet Ertegun warned me, you’ve got to be very careful with Bette. She’s precious cargo. She’s my talent: don’t let her get lost, and be very security conscious.’ I said, ‘Ahmet, I will guard her with my life.’ And I went with her and my wife, Marilyn, and her friend at the time was Peter Riegert. Before we got to the Dodgers game, we were passing Echo Park, right near Dodger Stadium. And, there’s a big fair, called ‘Pan-Pacific Day.’ All the Pacific countries are having some kind of a fest and a feast. Bette says, ‘Stop the car, I’ve got to participate in this. After all, I am from Hawaii, you know.’ She runs out, and—Oh my God! She’s lost in the crowd!—I fucking lost her! I am having visions of Ahmet Ertegun looking for me with a hangman’s noose. Finally, after about 35 minutes, I found her eating some food, talking Samoan, or some kind of Hawaiian talk with some beautiful Asian women. We got her to the stadium, and of course they put her name on the scoreboard, and she got a big round of applause, and we had a great time. It was a wonderful, wonderful time!” (77).

  According to Brooks, “I met new friends through her: Bruce Vilanch, and a few other folks along the way. Bette and Carole Bayer Sager and Peter Allen used to come to my home for dinner all the time. It was one of the best times of our lives. I had ‘I Go to Rio’ with Peter Allen, which was a smash across the boards. Around that same time, Carole Bayer Sager had ‘You’re Moving Out Today’ ” (77).

  On Wednesday, December 7, 1977, NBC-TV broadcast Bette’s special Ol’ Red Hair Is Back. Her co-stars were Dustin Hoffman and famed circus clown Emmett Kelly, Jr. The show opened with Bette emerging from her seashell, resurrected from Clams on the Half-Shell, complete with the overture from Oklahoma! She performed “Hello in There” emotionally to sad-faced clown Kelly and even undressed Hoffman while he played piano. Nick Yanni in the Soho Weekly News announced of the special, “Bette is terrific—absolutely spectacular, most engaging and endearing not only to her legions of loyal fans, but probably, after this show, to many new converts” (79).

  Oddly enough, for the special, Bette used a new group of Harlettes: Sharon Redd teamed with former Harlettes Robin Grean and Merle Miller. Although much of Midler’s material was lifted and restaged from her concert act, considerable expurgation of her in-concert material was required for TV. Example: “We washed, we showered, we FDS’d [feminine deodorant sprayed] ourselves into a stupor” was changed to “We washed, we showered, we gargled ourselves into a stupor.” However, she did manage to get enough zingers into the script, just under the noses of the network censors. Giving an “aside” to the Harlettes, Bette commanded, “Try to remain vertical, girls—at least until the first commercial” (80).

  According to Gerrit Henry in the New York Times, “The 31-year-old Miss Midler has made it to the small screen largely intact. Those who know her stage show or albums are aware that Miss Midler’s act is anything but standard television fare. Her onstage persona, ‘The Divine Miss M,’ is a feverishly schizoid creation—a sex crazed, foul-mouthed hussy with a heart, and eyes of a lost child. . . . Add to this non-stop patter full of acid-tongued put-downs, salty language and sexual innuendo, and you have a performer who generates love-or-hate-her reactions almost of the kind elicited by the late Judy Garland” (80).

  TV Guide found Bette a bit restrained yet fully appealing: “There are some racy moments in the special—costumes—gestures, lyrics, and double entendres—but Bette is actually rather restrained by her own stage standards. No profanity. No nudity. No bumps and grinds. Even her dad ought to be able to watch her perform this time” (81). The trashy diva was a TV star now!

  When writer Gerrit Henry of the New York Times inquired of her future in television, Midler snapped back at him, “A future in TV? Who’d want a future on TV? Television is a medium that eats you alive. You can’t keep turning out good material week after week! Another special maybe” (80). If she had only listened to her own advice in the year 2000!

  The following year, Bette’s Ol’ Red Hair Is Back won an Emmy Award as the Outstanding Variety Special of the season. When the awards were handed out, Bette was on her first European concert tour, so Aaron accepted for her at the awards ceremony. However, he never once thanked Bette in his speech, and she never let him forget it.

  The TV special’s broadcast date was in the middle of Bette’s highly publicized nightclub tour, entitled “An Intimate Evening with Bette.” The tour encompassed dates at the Cave in Vancouver, Bimbo’s in San Francisco, the Roxy in Los Angeles, the Park West in Chicago, the Paradise Theater in Boston, and New York City’s famed Copacabana. A truce was finally worked out between the Harlettes, Bette, and Aaron Russo; and Sharon, Ula, and Charlotte were feature
d as Bette’s opening act. Then Bette would make her entrance, and the Harlettes would remain on stage as her background singers.

  According to Aaron at that time, Bette “has turned down offers in excess of $3 million to perform large concerts across the country. She sincerely believes that while stadiums would produce higher income, an intimate atmosphere is more vital in generating electricity between people and the performer” (82). Although the tickets to the engagement varied from city to city from $15 to $25 a head, scalpers were reportedly getting up to $100 each for them. (One has to keep in mind that this was 1978, when it was unthinkable that twenty-two years later a face-value ticket to see Midler on New Year’s Eve was $500 a head.)

  In New York City, the January 20, 1978, show was nearly canceled due to a huge blizzard that dumped thirteen inches of snow on the city streets. That night when Bette hit the stage, she quipped, “They promised us five inches and gave us thirteen. If life were only like that!” Bette was indeed in fine form. Discussing the fact that she had attended an EST seminar, she deadpanned, “EST! Oh, please . . . I wouldn’t recommend it. I should have gone to Bloomingdale’s instead!” (83).

  The unfortunate thing about Bette’s Copacabana engagement was that the club’s owners jammed far too many seats into the once-glamorous basement nightspot. Rex Reed wrote in the New York Daily News that “it wasn’t just crowded, it is miserable. . . . The act isn’t just sold out, it’s been oversold. . . . mobs pushed, shoved and groped their way along the narrow stairs in a reckless disregard of the fire regulations” (84). In the Village Voice, Arthur Bell wrote, “Ron Delsner, Aaron Russo, and whoever else is responsible for overcrowding the Copa during the Bette Midler run should have their asses kicked. They’ve done a disservice to their talent and to the establishment. The Second Coming couldn’t get me inside the Copa again” (78).

  In addition to the admission charge, the Copacabana also imposed a two-drink minimum. Laughing, Midler said to her audience, “You fools, they bought Manhattan for less money than it cost you to see me!” (83). Nevertheless, it was worth every cent, and the reviews were glowing.

  According to Rex Reed, “Finally, the star herself emerged. Her hair, blonder than its usual maraschino color, looked like 40 rats had spent the winter in it. Her spangled shirt looked like a sofa cover from Sister Ione’s tarot card parlor and mung bean salad bar. Beneath, she wore black toreador pants with a lace garter around the knee and yelled fearlessly to the roaring mob: ‘I stand before you, nipples to the wind!’ She was pure dynamite” (84).

  As 1978 began, Bette Midler had already conquered the record charts, the Broadway stage, the television screen, nightclubs, and concert halls. There was just one more obstacle in her push to become a total superstar: movies. That was the final medium that Bette had to master before Aaron Russo would have made good on his promise to make Midler into a “legend.”

  After the last shows at the Copacabana in January of 1978, Harlettes Redd, Hedwig, and Crossley officially struck out on their own, never again to work as a trio behind Bette. They had all made it clear that they very strongly disliked Russo, during this era, Ula publicly proclaimed, “Aaron’s not one of my favorite people. I wish Bette would break up with him. I think he’s making her untouchable. Whenever he wasn’t around, we actually had a good time together. We hung out together—we bowled and we’d stay at the same hotel. But whenever he was there, she’d be whisked away to some—you know—the best hotel in town and we’d never see her. He’d never let anybody get close to her. He just sort of scares away her friends” (48).

  According to Charlotte Crossley, Russo did things just to anger Midler. One of his famous stunts involved not bathing for several days at a time. An article that was printed in New West magazine in 1978 described Aaron as “so insignificant and classless and altogether sloblike. The moon-pie Jewish face framed by greasy ringlets, the Cookie Monster belly, the grungy gray sweatshirt that hikes up the rear to show suet and hair decorating his backbone” (67).

  While Bette was in San Francisco on her nightclub tour, Aaron had a huge run-in with concert promoter Bill Graham. The next week in Los Angeles, Russo showed up for the dates at the Roxy packing a pistol and surrounded by several burly and intimidating bodyguards.

  Although disliked by the people around Bette, Russo made an important move at exactly the right time. Bette Midler was going to make her long-awaited movie debut, and the cameras were about to roll that spring. So begins the final episode of “Bette and Aaron” and the start of Midler’s career as a movie star.

  11

  EVERYTHING COMES UP ROSES

  Bette Midler was destined to become a film actress. It was predicted for her early in her career, but it took several years to finally get her to the screen. Aaron Russo’s decision not to allow Bette to appear in several film projects that came her way was a strategic move to his credit.

  It was reported that Bette’s major film debut could have been in any one of a dozen different films. Among the roles that Midler and Russo passed on were Stockard Channing’s role in The Fortune (1975); Barbara Harris’s in Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975); Talia Shire’s in Rocky; Madeline Kahn’s in Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976); Jessica Lange’s in King Kong; and Goldie Hawn’s role in Foul Play (1978). Film versions of the lives of vaudeville star Sophie Tucker, scandalous author Dorothy Parker, Broadway legend Ethel Merman, and the bawdy Texas Guinan were also discussed as screen vehicles for Midler. There was, however, a biography that kept surfacing, entitled The Pearl, based on the life of tragic rocker Janis Joplin. It was this script that eventually evolved into The Rose (1979).

  The script for The Pearl was written by Bill Kerby, and it was commissioned by one of the producers at 20th Century-Fox, Marvin Worth. It was one of the initial projects that was offered to Bette when she first became the toast of the entertainment business in 1973. Worth wanted Bette to play Janis Joplin.

  “It was first sent to me,” recalls Midler, “not long after Janis passed away. I thought it was in very bad taste to send the script to anyone. It was like dancing on someone’s grave before the body was cold. To be blunt, I didn’t like it very much. By ’75 or ’76 we [Bette and Aaron] were at Columbia, trying to tailor-make a screenplay and having very little luck, mostly because the writers were unfamiliar with my work, or I didn’t communicate with them. This script kept coming back like clockwork. Eventually, I sat down and reread it, and it wasn’t bad. It’s not exactly the strongest plot in the whole world, but for a performer like me, it had a big emotional range, and I was interested in range” (85).

  “We eventually left Columbia. Maybe we were even thrown off the lot—I don’t remember. When it came down to the wire, The Rose, as it was called by then, was the one script we’d been offered in all those years that was a real big part and a real big good part,” says Bette (85).

  “By this time I was worn out, but I wanted to do films, I felt I had a contribution to make. Aaron called me up and said, ‘Why don’t you look at this again?’ I read it. I said, ‘These are the elements I’d like to keep: I’d like to keep this person a rock & roll singer, and I would like to keep the sorrow and a certain amount of self-hate, this constant seeking of hers for approbation. Everything else has to go.’ And that’s what they did. It’s a fine framework to hang the songs on, something to hang the character on. We did a lot of improvising” (85).

  Director Mark Rydell has said that he was also offered the script of The Pearl in 1973. “I wanted to use Bette Midler, but at that time the studio didn’t appreciate my suggestion. So I passed. The script went to many directors, including Ken Russell, and finally back to me five years later with a test of Midler, which to my mind made it possible,” says Rydell (85).

  Mark Rydell and screenplay writer Bo Goldman began revising Kerby’s original script. “At first it was more directly about Joplin,” explains Rydell. “Bo and I fictionalized it and made it into a much more personal story instead of a documentary. We wante
d to reveal some of the heroism of virtuosity. There’s a price that people who are that gifted pay—a kind of deep hunger that’s hard to satisfy” (85).

  On April 24, 1978, filming of The Rose began. Bette Midler, Alan Bates, and Frederic Forrest starred; Mark Rydell directed; Bo Goldman, Michael Cimino, and William Kerby wrote the screenplay, based on the story by Marvin Worth and Michael Cimino; Marvin Worth and Aaron Russo were the producers and Vilmos Zsigmond, the photographer. Music for the film was produced by Paul A. Rothchild, who had produced Janis Joplin’s last and most famous album, Pearl. The film had a twelve-week shooting schedule and a $9 million budget. Filming took place in New York City and Los Angeles. The concert footage was shot at the Wiltern Theater in L. A., and the Long Beach Veteran’s Memorial Stadium was the site of The Rose’s final concert sequence.

  According to Bette, that segment was one of the most disorienting ones to shoot. “It was really bizarre,” she explained. “It was like playing a double part or even four parts. There was me knowing that some audience were fans of mine, pretending that I was this girl, pretending that they liked the girl, and then pretending back to me. All of this pretending really showed who was who. Then, of course, the kids—even though they were fans of mine—were all dressed up in those ’60s togs. Some of them had short hair, some of them had long hair, some of them had taken acid, and some of them smoked grass. It was the strangest experience to be doing this in 1978 and all of them acting like they were in the ’60s. By the end of the day I was convinced I was in 1969!” (8).

  One of the prime pressures on Bette was to create this singer called the Rose, bearing in mind the self-destructive nature of someone like Janis Joplin without pretending to be Joplin. The drugs, sex, and rock & roll credo and the emotional hollowness of life in the fast lane had to come through, while an underpinning of emotional vulnerability had to show.