Bette Midler

by Mark Bego

  For her it was a very special evening, and a magical hour and a half of TV history. Yet, to this day, she refuses to watch a tape of the show. “I did it and I walked away, and I think he did, too. I will always have the memory. . . . I wanted to keep my memory of it the way it is for me. I didn’t want to have to look at it and say, ‘I shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t know that happened. Gee, that’s not the way I remember it,’ which is really truly gorgeous” (155).

  On August 30, 1992, at the annual Emmy Awards, Bette’s performance on the final episode of The Tonight Show was nominated in the category of Best Performance, Variety or Music Program. She won, but was not present to receive the trophy.

  Bette, in fact, got so much attention for being Johnny Carson’s last guest on the final episode of The Tonight Show that she was later to lampoon herself, on TV’s animated comedy series The Simpsons. However, on The Simpsons episode that Midler provided the voice to, she was serenading comically Crusty the Clown on his last TV show.

  On September 23, she attended the fashion industry party “Valentino: Thirty Years of Magic,” with all proceeds going toward AIDS charities. On October 3 she was one of the stars at the biannual Children’s Diabetes Foundation benefit, which was held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. And on December 23 she was among the celebrities to appear on CBS-TV celebrating the HBO 20th Anniversary special.

  When Bill Clinton was inaugurated president of the United States, several huge gala events were held, at which some of the biggest celebrities in America performed. Bette was included in the special A Call for Reunion, on January 17, 1992.

  In the summer of 1992, Bette Midler released the American version of her Greatest Hits album, Experience the Divine. It contains fourteen of Bette’s best, and best-known performances, from her first eleven years on Atlantic Records. Interestingly enough, five of the songs were taken from her Divine Miss M album: “Hello in There,” “Do You Want to Dance?”; “Chapel of Love;” the Manilow-helmed version of “Friends;” and the single version of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” which Manilow also produced. Naturally, the album included her three biggest hits: “The Rose,” “From a Distance,” and “Wind beneath My Wings.” The album also featured “Only in Miami,” “When a Man Loves a Woman,” “Miss Otis Regrets,” “Shiver Me Timbers,” and “In My Life.” The one never-before-released song was Bette’s rendition of “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road),” taken from her award-winning performance on The Tonight Show.

  A very good sampling of Miss M’s astonishing career, it also seemed to ignore several of her career highlights. There was nothing from her albums Bette Midler, Songs for the New Depression, Broken Blossom, Thighs and Whispers, and Divine Madness. Even singles like “In the Mood,” “Beast of Burden,” “Married Men,” and “You’re Moving Out Today” were skipped over.

  The album was quite successful. Although it only made it as high as Number 50 on the American Billboard charts, it sold progressively well, and it eventually sold a million copies and was certified Platinum. In the U.K. it made it to Number 3 on the album charts.

  For her next big screen role, Bette chose a trademark Disney film. She played the leader of a trio of witches in the strictly family-fare Halloween spoof Hocus Pocus. Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy portrayed her spellbinding siblings in this light comedy, clearly aimed at children.

  The male lead in the film, Max, is played by teenage Omri Katz, who is most famous for having played the role of young John Ross Ewing in the nighttime TV soap opera Dallas. And Thora Birch plays eight-year-old Dani, who ends up wrangling with this trio of kooky witches. Birch is so saccharine sweet that it is hard not to wish that a really nasty spell gets put upon her. But alas, she and Katz end up outwitting the evil threesome by the end of the picture—in good Disney fashion.

  Choreographer and video director Kenny Ortega was the director of Hocus Pocus, and the film was coproduced with Bette’s business partner, Bonnie Bruckheimer.

  The beginning sequence starts out suspensefully enough that it looks like it might develop into an adult horror flick. It is 1693, in Salem, Massachusetts, where the three Sanderson sisters are the town terrors. We find them casting a spell to provide themselves with eternal youth. They have the ability to steal the youthful life force from young girls and turn back the hands of time on their own bodies.

  When the older brother of their latest victim interferes, the Sanderson sisters simply turn him into a talking black cat—one who has the powers of eternal life. When the townspeople get ready to put the witch trio to death, the women cast another spell, which puts them in some sort of time-warping cosmic suspended animation.

  Cut to 1993, when they are brought back to life, only to wrangle with a whole new generation of children and adults—and the same talking black cat who is still hanging around Salem, waiting for vengeance.

  Bette obviously had a ball playing the part of Winifred Sanderson. Her clothes and makeup alone are totally over-the-top. As Winny, Midler wears an elaborate, bosom-exposing green velvet Victorian gown. Her hair is a wild mane of carrot orange, her mouth is filled with rat-like teeth, and she has talons for fingernails. Her over-the-top acting is equally as outrageous and scenery-chewing. Throughout, Miss M seems to be doing her best combo impersonation of Edna May Oliver, Margaret Hamilton, and Bette Davis as Baby Jane Hudson.

  In fact, all of the witches overact with great delight. Sarah Jessica Parker as Sarah Sanderson is a bit of an airhead, and Kathy Najimy as Mary Sanderson is a ditzy clown. As the Halloween 1993 plot progresses, the supporting characters become more and more cartoonlike. They include a magic spell book that floats through the air, has a winking eyeball on its cover, and possesses the ability to turn its own pages. The witches even bring back to life a ghoul who was buried with his mouth sewn shut.

  Although Bette and her evil sisters are the stars of the film, the plot is driven by and centers around the modern-day brother and sister, who are the protagonists to the wicked Sanderson gals. It is October 31—the one night of the year when dead spirits can come to life. When Max and his sister Dani “trick or treat” at the house of a teenage girl he likes at school, Allison (Vinessa Shaw), the three children set out for the Sanderson house—on a day that just happens to be the 300th anniversary of the witches’ public lynching. It seems that the witches set their postmortem, time machine of a spell to revive them on exactly that date, whenever a virgin lights the enchanted candle. In this case, much to his embarrassment, it turns out to be Max.

  Like events that occurred 300 years previously, the teenage brother attempts to save his little sister from the clutches of the evil sisters, with the help of the three-century-old talking black cat. This is strictly a cartoonish comic adventure, so one has to abandon belief in logic and go with the Wizard of Oz sense of reality that this film conjures up.

  There are some slapstick comic moments along the way. When the Sanderson sisters travel the streets of Salem on their brooms, goofy Najimy, at a loss for a good broom, grabs the next best thing—a vacuum cleaner.

  In one of the silliest sequences comes when the sisters stumble into the household of Garry Marshall and Penny Marshall. Since it is Halloween, the modern Salem citizens don’t think anything is odd about the Sandersons’ 300-year-old garb. Garry is dressed as Satan, and Bette and her witch sisters mistake him for the real master of the gates of Hell.

  The most amusing Midler scene comes when the witches follow the kids to a costume party. Not one to miss a spell-binding musical moment, Bette ends up onstage singing her own wicked version of the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ hit “I Put a Spell on You.” The script doesn’t miss the chance to use every pun it can get its hands on, including “The witch is back!”

  The kids end up being savvy enough to trap the witches in the pottery kiln of the local high school, in an attempt to shake and bake them into oblivion. However, when that plan backfires, Bett and her sister witches come back for another round of battle with the mere mortals. Jus
tifiably, the witches get even with the two bullies who bedeviled Max at the beginning of the film. As this is a Disney children’s flick, by the end of the film the kids win, and the witches are exiled to oblivion.

  Released in the summer of 1993, Hocus Pocus received mixed reviews, but did well at the box office, as “G”-rated family fare. Said Miss M at the time, “I did [Hocus Pocus] because I’ve got a six-year-old kid and there’s nothing out there for her to see. It’s harmless: it’s got no four-letter words—the violence is minimal. It’s broad and silly, but I don’t have to worry what I look like. . . . It’s nice to just romp” (131).

  She was also happy to find out that her witch film sold more tickets at the box office than For the Boys did. This, especially, was good news to hear. “Well, I’m not disappointed anymore!” she exclaimed at the time, “Because y’know, I got my box office grosses [for Hocus Pocus] today and I’m just swimming along. Yes! I have a new hit! I don’t have to think about For the Boys anymore. So there!” (155).

  Bette’s next film appearance was both “inspired” and “divine.” Ever since she played the Rose in her first film, she had toyed with the idea of portraying Mama Rose in the timeless Broadway classic Gypsy.

  It was filmed in eight weeks in Los Angeles, California, with an estimated budget of $14 million. CBS-TV paid in excess of $5 million to broadcast it twice. Bette was thrilled to be cast in the role. “I always wanted to play that character,” she claimed. “I would have played it in stock if I had had the chance. The score is extraordinary. The writing is just incomparable.” She also joked, “Nothing was skimped on. Except my salary” (155).

  Filming Gypsy reinforced Bette’s feelings of frustration at the difficulty of producing movie musicals. According to her, “I feel bad that the whole nation doesn’t get to celebrate this tradition more often because it is valuable and it is well-crafted and it is something that we should be proud of. Yet we seem to throw the magical things that we’ve made aside or tear them down and tramp on them. Maybe it’s because we’re constantly reinventing ourselves, but personally I think it’s a real waste” (155).

  She also revealed that she had consciously stayed away from singing Broadway show tunes in her act and on her albums. “It’s something I’ve avoided doing throughout my career, singing show tunes. And I really like show tunes. [They’re] such a peculiar thing in American life because most people were interested in rock & roll or popular music or rhythm & blues music, they don’t want anyone to know that they’re closet show-tune listeners. But I am!” (155).

  From the very opening scene, when Mama Rose pushes her daughters onstage at Uncle Jocko’s talent show audition, it’s clear that Midler—with her bawdy singing style and quipping sense of humor—was made for this role. The character of Rose is aggressive, abrasive, witty, and sharp. These are all qualities that Midler has going for her.

  The performances—from those of the stars to the supporting characters—are all exciting and fresh. Bette was obviously able to include a couple of her own favorite people in the cast: Peter Riegert as Mama Rose’s love interest, Herbie; and former-Harlette Linda Hart as the hard-talking stripper with a trumpet, Miss Mazeppa.

  The fact that Bette and Peter were once romantically involved makes their on-camera chemistry so much more believable. They look like two people who could be in love with each other, and their scenes are all the more natural for this. They look and sound good together, serenading each other with such classic Stephen Sondheim lyrics as “You’ll Never Get Away from Me,” “Funny,” and “Together, Wherever We Go.”

  The film is based on the memoirs of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, and the real star of the show is her domineering mother, Rose. Rose is determined that her two daughters have the kind of show business career she would have loved to have had. She relentlessly pushes daughter June, who is backed up by less-talented Louise. When teenage June (Jennifer Beck) runs off with a boyfriend, Rose is determined to turn Louise (Cynthia Gibb) into a huge star. (In reality, “dainty” June grew up to be real-life film star June Havoc.)

  The musical was originally written with Ethel Merman in mind, and she was the star of the original Broadway production in 1959. It was later turned into a film starring Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood (1962), which is still very popular. Then it was revived on Broadway, by Angela Lansbury in 1971 and by Tyne Daly in 1989. With music by Jule Stein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, it was one of the most popular musicals ever written and a show that has stood the test of time. It was truly ripe for the Midler touch.

  When Rosalind Russell played the role in the first film, she was not a dynamic singer. Although she sang all of Rose’s songs in the film, it wasn’t always her voice that was heard—specifically, the song “Rose’s Turn.” On this vocally demanding number, Russell’s voice was “augmented” with the voice of professional behind-the-scenes singer Lisa Kirk. It had been a long time since an actress could really belt out these songs as they were meant to be sung, and Miss Midler was just the right gal to fill Rose’s high heels.

  Bette had, of course, been in Fiddler on the Roof and had headlined Broadway with her concert stage act, but she had never starred in a “book” musical like this. By mounting this handsome-looking and very faithful production, it was her chance to give her own indelible interpretation to a classic Broadway show, while capturing her performance on film. Bette’s production of Gypsy debuted on CBS-TV in America on December 12, 1993. In addition, Atlantic Records released a deluxe soundtrack album to accompany it. In markets outside of the United States, Gypsy was released as a theatrical film.

  Bette is in her Yenta-esque heyday as the ultimate stage mother. She takes songs like “Some People” and attacks them with determination and spark. The story holds up well and is truly one of Midler’s finest filmed performances.

  Although a true survivor, Mama Rose is an unsympathetic character, for the most part. In fact, she is so cheap that she steals blankets from hotels to sew into overcoats, and she pockets the silverware from restaurants when no one is looking. She is determined to make ends meet, no matter what she has to do—from petty thievery to selling her own teenage daughter into burlesque.

  According to Gypsy Rose Lee herself, “Mother had been many things, but she had never been nice. Charming, perhaps, and courageous, resourceful, and ambitious, but not nice. Mother, in a feminine way, was ruthless. She was, in her own words, ‘a jungle mother.’ The jungle was vaudeville of the 1920s, and we were her brood” (156).

  The scene that erupts into the song “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” is perhaps Midler’s most magical screen sequences ever—second only to the film’s last-act tour de force, “Rose’s Turn.” The bawdy, scenery-chewing intensity of both numbers plays well with all of Midler’s theatrical attributes. This bigger-than-life role and these gutsy songs seem custom-made for Bette. The scene in the dressing room right after she tells Herbie to go to Hell is an intense, pivotal point in the movie. The emotions played off Bette’s face are magical. Furthermore, many of Bette’s songs in the film were filmed and recorded “live” as they happened. This is rarely done in film. Usually, the vocal tracks are prerecorded, and the singer lip-synchs. Here, Midler sings them live and imbues them with a spontaneous fire that is riveting to watch and to hear.

  Strong acting by a brilliant cast full of supporting characters makes this film a treat throughout. Andrea Martin as Mr. Grandsinger’s prim secretary, Ed Asner as Rose’s stern father, Michael Jeter as a befuddled Mr. Goldstone, Christine Ebersole as acidic Tessie Tura, and Anna Mc-Neeley as bubble-headed Miss Electra, all make the most of their scenes. Cynthia Gibb is especially charming as Louise. Her scenes with the strippers are priceless—she is the only person on the screen who can seem to stand up to Mama Rose. And Linda Hart is a scream as the haughty and vulgar Miss Mazeppa.

  The reviews for Gypsy, and for Bette, were unanimously glowing. Ken Tucker, in Entertainment Weekly, claimed, “Even if you don’t like musicals, you’ll like this one. Th
e primary reason is Bette Midler’s hilarious, heartfelt performance as Mama Rose, a star turn that caps a real comeback of a year for Midler. . . . By the time Midler revs up for her final curtain showstopper, ‘Rose’s Turn,’ she has convinced us that Rose—brassy, vulgar, and selfish—is worthy of respect as a woman who had to live out her dreams through her children because, as she says, she was ‘born too soon and started too late.’ Midler builds ‘Rose’s Turn’ into a spectacular statement of amoral show-business principles” (157).

  “Entertaining! Bette Midler is manic as the obsessive, ambitious Rose!” claimed Sight and Sound (98). Mike Duffy, in the Detroit Free Press, wrote, “This three-hour Midler tour de force—based on the famed Broadway musical—shimmers and soars with vintage show business pizzazz. If ever there was a harmonic convergence of star and role, it is here. Bette Midler was born to play Mama Rose.” Rick Kogan, in the Chicago Tribune, proclaimed, “Midler’s skill and singing, which succeed in redefining and deepening the character. . . . Midler scores knockouts with virtually every number!” (98). Jonathan Taylor, in Daily Variety, said, “This new production, headed by Bette Midler in the role she was born to play, succeeds. . . . Midler’s Rose is explosive, riveting and impossible, yet impossible not to love” (158), And the list of raves went on and on.

  With regard to singing the electrifying show-stopper “Rose’s Turn,” Bette concedes, “That was a real challenge. It’s full of emotion. It’s full of those high Bs!” (155).

  Gypsy was a huge ratings success when it originally aired on December 12, 1993. The film has subsequently gone on to become successful video and DVD releases. It remains one of her strongest film performances and is a “must see” in her growing cinematic resume.