Bette Midler

by Mark Bego

  In 1991, American journalist and TV talkshow host Geraldo Rivera published his memoir Exposing Myself. In the text of the book, Rivera wrote about his hot affair with Bette Midler during the 1970s. Bette saw “red” when she read what he had to say about her, and all of a sudden a whole lot of mud was flung!

  Wrote Geraldo, “She had great tits and personality to match. We were in the bathroom, preparing for the interview, and at some point I put my hands on her breasts. She loved it, and we fell into a passionate embrace, which segued immediately into a brief and torrid affair. Bette had an enormous sexual appetite in those days” (137).

  Midler saw it a little differently. According to her at the time, “You call that little thing an affair? He’s such a toad! He has the nerve. . . . he’s such a user. Let me tell you my Geraldo story. He’d just come off his Willowbrook thing. He was really hot. He wanted to interview me, but I forget what channel it was for. This was twenty years ago! He came to my house, and he and his producer pushed me into the bathroom and—check it out. I’ll show him—they broke poppers under my nose and started to grope me. I hadn’t even said ‘hello.’ I was completely shocked. Completely stunned. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to behave. I had no idea. Then I recovered from what happened, and when we did the interview he started telling me about Maria Shneider and how he must have jumped on her. This guy was insane. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. . . . What was I supposed to say in front of his camera crew, ‘Get the hell out of my house?’ I don’t remember if he apologized. . . . I had gone on the road, and he called me in Oklahoma, and he wanted to visit me. This is the affair he’s talking about? He came to visit me in Oklahoma? I don’t get it, but a lot of these conquests of his were sort of unwilling. . . . Date rape? No—interview rape! Well, this was no rape. He didn’t rape me, but it was pretty shocking. What a slimeball! I’m really appalled. I can’t believe he’s doing it. This guy must be really desperate. . . . I’m sure he doesn’t give his own measurements. I’ll repeat: You call that little thing an affair?” (40).

  After two incredibly successful albums, Midler fell into a record-sales slump with two LPs, which were largely misunderstood: Songs for the New Depression (1976) and Broken Blossom (1977). (Courtesy of Atlantic Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Bette, with co-star Frederic Forrest, in The Rose. She longed to become a movie star, and in her first screen role, she received an Academy Award nomination. She played a self-destructive rock star, fashioned after Janis Joplin. (Courtesy of 20th Century Fox / MJB Photo Archives)

  Bette at the opening of The Rose, Ziegfeld Theatre, New York City, 1979. (Courtesy of Charles M. Moniz)

  Bette’s most famous group of Harlettes (clockwise): Charlotte Crossley, Ula Hedwig, and Sharon Redd. They became so well-known that they ended up with their own recording contract. (Courtesy of Columbia Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Bette wears a typewriter hat for a record-breaking 1,500 book–signing appearance in 1980 in New York City. (Courtesy of Charles M. Moniz)

  In Divine Madness, Bette not only sang her ass off, she also told several wry and raunchy Sophie Tucker jokes. She once quipped to a loud audience member, “Shut your hole honey, mine’s makin’ money.” (Courtesy of The Ladd Corporation / MJB Photo Archives)

  In the 1980 concert film, Divine Madness, Bette Midler was able to show off many sides of her musical talents. (Courtesy of The Ladd Corporation / MJB Photo Archives)

  According to Bette Midler, in preparation for her role as Barbara Whiteman, she went through a period of character study: “I walked all around Beverly Hills, and I shopped until I was blue.” (Courtesy of Touchstone Films / MJB Photo Archives)

  Margrit Ramme, Little Richard, Bette Midler and Richard Dreyfus in the comedy hit Down and Out in Beverly Hills. (Courtesy of Touchstone Films / MJB Photo Archives)

  Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Bette Midler was always an exotic blossom. Although she has lilies in her hair in this one, it was another flower, the rose, which she is most closely associated with. She starred in a film called The Rose, had a huge hit with the song “The Rose,” played Madame Rose in Gypsy, and even recorded an album called Bette of Roses. (Courtesy of Atlantic Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Always considering herself an “artiste” and known for her ample bosom, Bette in 1984 starred in the cable television special Art or Bust. (Courtesy of HBO / MJB Photo Archives)

  Singer and record producer Dan Hartman with Bette Midler in 1986. Hartman’s song “Waiting to See You” was part of the soundtrack for Ruthless People. (Courtesy of David McGough for Epic Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Bette gets down on the stage floor in her video for “Beast of Burden.” She not only turned the Rolling Stones song into a hit, Mick Jagger made a guest appearance in the video. (Courtesy of Atlantic Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Midler, who wrote two hit books in the early 1980s, poses in her pajamas for National Library Week in 1984. The book that she is hugging is her own children’s story, The Saga of Baby Divine. (Courtesy of American Library Association / MJB Photo Archives)

  The infuriated Miss M wanted no mistake to be made on her opinion of Geraldo Rivera. “Oh, he was a slimeball!” she exclaimed. “If I had known then that he was going to do this twenty years later, I never would have given him the time of day” (27).

  Jeff Erdel, who was identified by USA Today as a “Rivera spokesman,” said of Midler’s efforts to trivialize the so-called “torrid affair” between Bette and Geraldo, “Absurd! He did not drug Bette Midler.. . . This was not a one-night affair or attack. This was the beginning of a torrid, month-long sexual relationship consummated on perhaps twenty different occasions” (138). He also insinuated in the press that Midler’s statements were meant as a part of her publicity campaign for her upcoming film For the Boys.

  Geraldo’s rebuttal in the press continued to fan the flames of his controversial book. According to him, “I have no idea why she suddenly turned so mean” (139).

  While she was settling scores and clearing up past feuds, Bette also lit into Bruce Springsteen. Apparently, in the 1980s, when she was working with producer Chuck Plotkin, he played the demo of a song Springsteen had written, called “Pink Cadillac.” Bruce had yet to record it, and Plotkin was under the impression that it was free for Midler to record first, so she went into the studio and recorded her version of the song. According to Bette, she spent $25,000 recording the song, and, said Bette, “[Springsteen] said I couldn’t sing it. . . . it wasn’t a girl’s song” (140). It seemed that Bruce wanted to record it first, and that Plotkin had no legal right to offer it to Midler. When Natalie Cole recorded the song in 1988 and had a hit with it, Bette was even madder at Bruce than she had been before.

  In addition to all of the publicity that was being generated by the Geraldo Rivera-Bette Midler feud, and her gripes about Springsteen, Miss M was in the news in November 1991 for her latest crusade: trash. Well, not the kind of trash that she is usually associated with. This time around, it was trash alongside the highway, making the American landscape look shabby. According to the press, “Midler was the 236th Adopt-a-Highway volunteer.” A strip of highway in the North Hollywood area was suddenly designated her responsibility, with signs reading, “Litter Removal Next 2 Miles, Bette Midler” (141).

  Also in 1991, Bette was part of an all-star public service music video aired on television and at movie theaters in the United States. The name of the video was Yakety Yak: Take It Back. The video was part animation and part live action. The animation segments included a cartoon Yak, dancing with music celebrities, delivering a “no littering” message. Midler appeared in the lively video, which is set to the Leiber & Stoller song “Yakety Yak (Don’t Talk Back).” The Number 1 hit was originally recorded by the Coasters in 1958. Bette is dressed in a black jacket and skirt with a white blouse, as a school teacher instructing her students to recycle. The song was slightly rewritten, with the message “take it back” as the chorus. The video also
features Pat Benatar, Queen Latifah, Lita Ford, B. B. King, Kenny Loggins, Natalie Cole, Charlie Daniels, Stevie Wonder, Tone Loc, Ozzy Osbourne, Quincy Jones, and the voice of Dr. John as Yakety Yak, the animated Yak.

  In a separate public service announcement, Midler is seen on camera delivering the message: “Listen to me: DO NOT—I repeat—DO NOT ever throw a bottle or can out of your car window onto the highway. If you do, I will follow your car. I will come to your house and I will tell you to your face: ‘Take it back! Recycle it!’ And, believe me, I can get very nasty” (142).

  Looking stunningly fabulous on the cover of the December 1991 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Miss M began the publicity campaign that would launch her upcoming movie, For the Boys. One of the things that the Vanity Fair piece brought to light was all of Midler’s charitable efforts, especially centering on the AIDS epidemic.

  When the AIDS crisis occurred in the early 1980s, Bette Midler was one of the first Hollywood celebrities to lend unflagging support toward raising money for AIDS-related charities. It had been going on for a decade now. The diva said at the time, “The last ten years I have worked on behalf of people with AIDS because I couldn’t stand idly by, twiddling my thumbs, pissing and moaning while people I loved shriveled up and died. I began my career in 1965, and I am not lying, I do not exaggerate one minute, when I tell you that nearly everyone who I started out with is dead. . . . I never thought that at such a relatively young age I would be on such intimate terms with death. My whole adult life I have had gay friends, I’ve had gay collaborators, I’ve had gay mentors. And if I live to be a thousand, I could never repay the debt I owe to them. They gave me my vision and they gave me my career” (40).

  Among the most significant members of Bette’s entourage whom she lost to AIDS was her longtime collaborator and comedy writer Jerry Blatt. On the inside of her 1990 album Some People’s Lives, Bette wrote her “dedication” in the liner notes: “For Jerry Blatt.”

  Speaking of Jerry Blatt, Moogy Klingman recalls, “He was a great guy. He was like her best friend. He was a gay bodybuilder type. He was a great guy. I wrote a bunch of songs with him. He was devoted to her” (36).

  During this same era, Bette found herself on the threshold of a new era of self-confidence. She had a clear-cut picture of who she was and who her stage persona—the Divine Miss M—was. Regarding her alter ego, Midler explained in 1991: “It used to be confusing. They wanted me to be that. It was like Rita Hayworth—all those guys thought they married [the movie character] Gilda. I didn’t want to live like that. I didn’t want to put filler in my hair and wear platform shoes my whole life . . . but she [Miss M] wasn’t in any agony, psychotic, or . . . well, a little bit, not too much” (40).

  When it was suggested that before her association with Disney, her movie career was in the toilet, Midler in her own defense quipped, “It wasn’t in the toilet. Oh, maybe I was headed for the bathroom door” (27).

  Using a Disney character reference, she claimed that she very often felt like the confused puppet Pinocchio. “Sometimes I’m sorry I got swept up in it,” she said about her film career. “Remember when Pinocchio goes to Stromboli, and Stromboli convinces him to be an actor? And Pinocchio performs a little bit, and Stromboli puts him in a cage? Well, that’s a lot like what’s it’s like. You want to do this, and you’re completely fascinated by the dream. And you get there. And suddenly you’re in a cage” (27).

  According to her, she had absorbed a lot of knowledge about the movie business in the last decade of films. “I’ve learned how to make deals. I’ve learned how to negotiate and that some things are more important than others. In order to get what you want, you have to choose what’s important. You have to find the point past which you would never go. I’ve learned how to take responsibility for what comes on my watch. You know the old expression, ‘It happened on your watch’? Well, you have to take responsibility. And, I’ve learned where to buy my bras” (27).

  Although she was clearly making all of her own decisions in her film career, Bette during this era passed on two very important films. She was offered the starring role in the Stephen King film Misery (1990). She claimed that she felt it wasn’t right for her. Instead, Kathy Bates took the role of the ultimate crazed fan and won an Academy Award for it. Had she chosen to do the role, it could have been the Demented Miss M who was “hobbling” James Caan, who played the stranded author in the film.

  Another film she declined starring in was a vehicle that was developed at Disney just for her: Sister Act (1992). It was the comic story of a Las Vegas lounge singer who takes refuge in a convent, when she finds herself being chased by “the mob.” Instead, Whoopi Goldberg starred in the movie. The film was such a huge box-office hit that it was followed two years later by Sister Act 2. Bette had other ideas.

  The Pee Wee Herman scandal was one of the biggest headline-grabbing stories of this era. When the popular children’s talkshow host was caught masturbating in an adult theater in Florida, it ruined his TV career. According to Bette Midler at the time, “You know, I wanted so much to do a movie with Pee-Wee Herman. I really ought to. That would be so jive. . . . My character is so broad and so over the top, and his character in its way is over the top, too. His character is quite sly in that he sort of knows what’s going on, but he never participates, and I wanted to do a My Little Chickadee-type of thing while he falls in love with me in an innocent way and I kind of use him in a nefarious way. Personally, I happen to like Pee-Wee. He’s such a sweet guy. He’s a big gardener. Big big big. Nobody who is a gardener can be all bad. . . . I don’t know what the hell he was doing in that theater. I swear to God! But what’s the big deal? That’s what those theaters are for. You’d think that people had never been to one. How can you be so hypocritical as to have one [adult theater] in your community and then pretend you don’t know what’s going on in them? It’s so stupid! Maybe he should have brought a raincoat—who knows? It’s just so jive” (40).

  Of all the films Bette had done up to this time, she had the highest hopes for her own production of For the Boys. Ever since she first sang the Andrews Sisters’ “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” it had been a foregone conclusion that one day she would star in a 1940s-era film. Doing such a musical picture had been an idea Bette and her All Girls Productions had been attempting to get off the ground for years.

  Ultimately, this was to be the first film that she didn’t do for Disney Studios in seven years. It wasn’t for lack of trying. “We asked them,” Bette explains. “We brought it to them. It was one of the things we had to offer them when we first came, and it was not their kind of picture. They didn’t want to spend that much money, take that much risk. I’ve always understood how they feel about their product, so it really didn’t bother me. It remains to be seen if the public likes it or not, but they’ve gotten that it’s good. Jeffrey [Katzenberg] was thrilled. I belong to them in a certain sense. If this is a hit, it just enhances me for them” (40).

  For the Boys was to be something of a reunion for Bette, as it put her back together with director Mark Rydell, who had also directed her in The Rose. Since they had last worked together, Rydell had directed screen legends Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn in 1981’s On Golden Pond. Both veteran actors won Academy Awards for their work in that film.

  According to Rydell, “Bette was a more ragged human being during The Rose. It served The Rose, that kind of emotional skinlessness. She had a kind of hysterical talent during that period. She’s not that way anymore. She’s learned to function with ease. In The Rose I directed a child, now she’s a grown-up woman. In the last twenty years I don’t know of a deeper, more profound talent than Bette Midler. It’s like Katherine Hepburn. Katherine Hepburn is oddly not dissimilar. Their equipment is Ferrari. You’re not dealing with a Ford. You’re dealing with a Formula One engine” (40).

  As the film was about to open in theaters, even the soundtrack of For the Boys was highly publicized. The December 6, 1991, issue Tucson’s Arizona Daily S
tar carried a feature about the film’s supervising music editor, Curt Sobel. According to him, doing the sound editing on the film posed several challenges. “We could expand or compress words and whole sentences. Ordinarily, you record all music ahead of time, the actor practices lip-synching, and then has playback running through earphones and monitors, and they try to match” (143).

  He explained, “The whole film, outside of two songs that Bette sings, is all playback.” The songs “Come Rain or Come Shine” and “In My Life” were the songs which were filmed and performed live. “In that last song,” says Sabel, the final lyric was computer enhanced: “. . . the very last line, where she doesn’t quite sing the last note, is a playback line done months earlier” (143).

  Sobel says that Midler “was wonderful, very demanding, very opinionated. She knows what she likes and dislikes, and has no hesitation in letting you know” (143).

  One of the most fascinating aspects of the For the Boys soundtrack is that Bette’s first musical number in the film, “Billy-a-Dick,” is actually a rare and never-before-recorded song by Hoagy Carmichael and Paul Francis Webster. Finding a genuine 1940s-era Hoagy Carmichael tune, and giving it its debut in this film, was the kind of painstaking attention to detail that distinguishes For the Boys as a carefully crafted picture.

  One of the most crucial aspects of producing this film was deciding on the right choice of a leading man. Finally, it was decided that James Caan was the prefect actor to bring to life the role of philandering comedian Eddie Sparks. Although he is better known for his tough-guy roles, in films like Rollerball and The Godfather, Caan was also used to dealing with divas. After all, he did co-star with Barbra Streisand in Funny Lady in the 1970s, playing Billie Rose to her Fanny Brice. Bette and James had nearly co-starred together in Misery—had she not turned that film down.