Bette Midler

by Mark Bego

  Isn’t She Great? appeared and disappeared in movie theaters at a lightening-fast pace. The year was barely half over, and Midler had already had two year 2000 box-office “bombs.”

  As she had done with Get Shorty in the year 2000, Bette Midler chose to make a brief but high-profile appearance in an all-star film—totally unbilled in the credits. The film was the Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt, Marisa Tomei comedy What Women Want. Co-starring in the film are Alan Alda, Delta Burke, Valerie Perrine, Ana Gasteyer, Loretta Divine, and Lauren Holly.

  The plot of the film deals with a womanizing man, Nick Marshall (Gibson), who falls into a water-filled bathtub with a plugged-in hairdryer in his hand and is knocked out. When he regains consciousness, he finds that he now has an extrasensory power—he can hear what women are thinking.

  Bette portrays the role of Dr. J. M. Perkins, Gibson’s marriage- and family-counseling psychologist. With her hair red and slicked down in a stylish shoulder-length bob, wearing a tastefully tailored pants suit, Midler turns in a constrained and comically sarcastic portrayal. Although hers is only a one-scene role, she is brilliantly funny here.

  When she discovers that Gibson’s character actually can read her thoughts, she says, “Mr. Marshall, you might find this a little unorthodox, but would you mind awfully if I smoked?”

  When he says, “No, no, no, I understand,” she goes over to a sidetable in her office, opens up a fancy wood-and-metal cigarette box, lights up a marijuana joint, and takes several deep “tokes”—intent on getting stoned. Looking on, Gibson does a comic double-take.

  Although she has only that one brief scene in the whole movie, it is one of the most memorable in the whole film—which became a huge box-office hit. It proved once again that when the material is right, there is no one like Bette Midler.

  “There are no movie roles. But I still have a lot to offer,” proclaimed Midler in complete frustration (173).

  In the year 2000, Bette was completely reviewing her options: “They thought my work in that movie [The Rose] was a fluke. At the time, I was devastated. It was staggering. And it just happened to me again with the First Wives Club. The movie made a hundred million dollars, and the studio couldn’t get a sequel together. They thought it was a fluke. At least now my attitude has gotten better, you always worry that they are going to find out that you’re a fraud. But now I’m so old, I don’t care. Let them take it” (22).

  She was also frustrated with her once-glorious association with the Disney film corporation. According to her, “Even though I was their favorite girl at Disney, I was never the comic lead in one of their movies. I was always the support. Or the co-girls. I was, at the time, I was the highest-paid female in town, and I never even said anything about it because I thought that would be in poor taste. Now I’m ticked off that I didn’t say anything. These days, everyone tells their damn salaries, and I never said a word. That’s what comes from being a lady” (22).

  What she did take the largest amount of pride in was how her daughter was growing up. Said Bette at the time, “Sophie doesn’t watch teen shows. She chooses what she wants to watch, and we watch it with her. I make a big fuss. My motherly instinct has told me that this is a good way to train my daughter. There are some things that are completely off the table. Really terrible language, and drugs. And behavior that is uncivilized. Violence. Sex before you’re ready for it. Violent sex. Grossness—there are other ways to behave. You just shouldn’t let that become part of your soul. They’re grotesque. I mean, There’s Something about Mary—that stuff used to be private. What happened?” (1).

  Was teenage Sophie curious about Bette telling tales of her old days at the Continental Baths? Claimed Bette, “She’s not even a little bit curious. I think that’s better. Let her get her own dirty jokes. She doesn’t need any of mine. She wants to know what it was like at Studio 54 and she wants to know all that smarmy stuff that we lived through. Fortunately, there are enormous blank spots. But what I do remember I tell her about. And she’s just, ‘Oh my goodness, oh my goodness.’ . . . Sophie knows the difference between right and wrong, and she knows what’s not good for her. She’s not judgmental, she’s not scandalized by other people’s behavior, but she knows it’s not for her” (1).

  She was also very happy about her marriage to Martin. “The last couple of years have been really great. We don’t fight anymore,” she explains. “I think you get to a point where you realize, ‘I’m never going to change this person. I’d just better accept this person and enjoy what they have to offer. I think I’ll just relax.’ I don’t think anyone who’s lived with a person for a long time hasn’t wanted to reach over and strangle that person. Fortunately, those things pass. Our life hasn’t been a bed of roses by any means, but we stuck it out, and we came through at the other end. All of a sudden things fall into place” (1).

  Looking at the way her career has progressed, Bette Midler was satisfied with the choices she had made up to this point. “With age comes wisdom, and that’s one of the things that I learned,” she claimed. “I can’t drink more than two drinks—I’m the cheapest date on earth. I can’t smoke reefer. I can’t do blow. I cannot do that stuff. I don’t have the physical mechanism that allows me to do it. So I don’t do it. And I think it’s been good for me. Because I’m still here. And if you watch enough Behind the Music, you’ll see that everybody took a turn from the left. Everybody. And they all wound up in rehab and losing years of momentum and creativity, and that for me is the most boring thing” (120).

  Her own sense of independence was something that she had long relied upon. “I have always been on my own,” said Midler. “My mom and my dad, who were children of the Depression and World War II, always said, ‘It’s best not to count on men.’ They never told me I wouldn’t get married, but they told me I must learn to be independent, that I must support myself, that I must not think that anyone would support me. Maybe they thought I was so unappealing that I would never get married, but for whatever reason, that was their message: You can only count on yourself. And it took” (22).

  In 1996 Bette Midler starred in the most successful film of her career: First Wives Club. Since that time, she had come up to bat with three new starring projects: That Old Feeling, Drowning Mona, and now Isn’t She Great? Each one of them was less successful that its predecessor. What was she going to do next?

  “I’ve been making movies for many years,” she claimed, “and I was always frustrated by the fact that it was a very, very slow process—very slow to develop, very slow to get a green light, very slow to make, very slow to edit. Then if you don’t do well that first weekend, all that work is for nothing” (1).

  Suddenly, there were no new movies being offered to her. However, while all of this was going on, she was being courted by CBS-TV about launching a new project: her own weekly television show. For years she had insisted that TV was the last thing she would ever get involved in. However, she needed a new outlet for her creativity. Eventually, the idea of doing a television show didn’t sound as repugnant as once it had.

  According to her, “I never wanted to get out of the movie business. My way is to find another route. When I’m blocked by people who are not interested, not creative, and want to preserve the status quo, I go around them. They see me in a certain way, and they push me aside. That happens everywhere, not just in the movie business. CBS really listens to me. They seem to value what I have to say” (22).

  Bette was tired of beating herself up looking for the right movie role. It was time to concentrate on something new. In the year 2000, she was about to embark on a whole new chapter of her career: on television.

  20

  BETTE TV

  While she decided what to do with her acting career, Bette Midler began work on her album Bette. Instead of trying an assortment of producers and musical styles, Midler turned to Don Was to produce this new album, consisting largely of mellow-sounding versions of ’70s hits and contemporary tunes. The rest of the album was rounded out wi
th new material. After she was finished with the album, she added an additional cut to the disc, which she wrote and produced with Marc Shaiman—the song “Nobody Else but You.”

  According to Midler, “I’m happiest when I’m singing. And I can always sing. In a funny way; singing gives me a free ride. Music informs everything. Comedy, for instance, is like music. It’s all beats, getting the right rhythm” (22).

  The Bette album opens with a sultry version of the Baby Washington hit “That’s How Heartaches Are Made.” Over the years it has been recorded by such varied performers as the Marvelettes and Dusty Springfield. It’s a great song to start off the album in a sexy, smooth way. Basically, the song sets the tone for most of the album. On Bette, the diva delivers similar smooth “quiet storm” renditions of other sexy R&B hits: “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me),” “Love TKO,” and “Shining Star.”

  She tackles a couple of contemporary classics, too. “God Give Me Strength” was written by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach for the film Grace of My Heart. The song was sung in the film by actress Illeana Douglas. In the film, Douglas plays a singer/songwriter styled after Carole King. On this slow and sexy version of “God Give Me Strength,” Bette really pours her heart out.

  Another stellar performance by Miss M comes on her version of “When Your Life Was Low,” which was written by Will Jennings and Joe Sample of the Jazz Crusaders and originally recorded by Randy Crawford (“Street Life”). This sad song of being left behind by an ex-love is equally as slow and somber, with Midler milking the sensitive lyrics for sultry pathos, effectively weaving a tale about the pain of love lost.

  The song that garners the biggest amount of electricity is “In These Shoes,” which is the one nod to the wacky side of Bette. The lyrics of the song find Midler being propositioned by different men who want to have sex in rugged settings. Bette sings her protest, asking, “In these shoes?” It is the only song on the album that offers a bit of goofy levity to the mellow-love-song mode of the rest of the album.

  The sensitive “Color of Roses” is a perfect “rose” reference for Midler on this album. Attempting a bit of techno-pop, Bette cranks up “Bless You, Child.” “Moses” finds her singing to a tropical reggae beat, about diamonds, roses, and a “best friend who is queer.” For the most part, producer Don Was chose settings for Midler that showed off her voice quite expressively. There are few poignant sad songs on this album, and only wild and campy excursion.

  The inclusion of the song “Nobody Else but You” gives a direct tie-in to the diva’s new television series, as it was the program’s theme song. It sounds very much like a cheerful TV show theme from the 1960s and is a bit out of place in the middle of all of the mellow ballads on this album.

  Her eighteenth album release, and her second one for Warner Brothers Records, the Bette album didn’t have the kind of crazy magic that Bathhouse Betty did. A mellow, “adult contemporary” LP, Bette never cracked the Top 40 in America on the Billboard charts and seemed to disappear rather quickly. It peaked at number 69 in Billboard magazine in the United States. The album certainly received a ton of national exposure, with several of the songs—particularly “Nobody Else but You”—getting introduced to the public on Midler’s TV show Bette. Somehow, this album seemed to get lost in the shuffle.

  Next for the diva came this nagging decision: Should Bette do TV? Should Bette not do TV? Should Bette do TV? Should Bette not do TV? According to her, she finally said “yes” to doing a series for CBS during the 2000–2001 season, but she kept secretly hoping that an incredible movie offer would materialize, and she would have to get out of it: “I thought I could set up a movie before committing to a series. But it was really a struggle. My husband and I talked about it and he said, ‘Turn a corner and be funny’ ” (22).

  Occasionally, in the past, Midler would say “yes” to one project or another and then wished that she hadn’t. Often she would get her business partner Bonnie Bruckheimer to back out of commitments. Bonnie thought that television could be a good move for Bette: “On TV, I told her, she could do everything she wants to do: laugh, cry, sing, do physical comedy, anything. I would talk to her about it endlessly. Bette is always saying ‘no,’ and then, when she finally says ‘yes,’ she always tries to get out of it. A week before the final Johnny Carson show, she called and said, ‘You have to get me out of this show.’ But I convinced her. I thought, ‘She’s Bette Midler. If this show doesn’t work, does that end thirty years of what she’s done in her career?’ No. And, anyway, they don’t write movies for her anymore, whether she’s in a TV show or not” (22).

  With regard to this TV gamble, Midler claimed at the time, “I always said I’d never watch anything stupider than me. And a lot of TV is really stupid. But movies are over for me. There’s nothing there for me. It was so hard to get a picture. My agents could only get me these cameos and I said, ‘What am I doing these cameos for?’ And I saw that all my compatriots, all the girls I had come up with—I never say women, I always say, ‘Girls, we’re not doing so good.’ So rather than wait for the axe to fall completely, because I like to work and I think I have a lot to offer, I said, ‘That’s it. Let’s try television” (22).

  Martin von Haselberg thought it was a good career move, in an exposure and marketing sort of way. “I felt the films were not the best vehicles for her. I thought TV could be an extension of her live show, where she really gets to show off her talent in a way I don’t think she can on film. But the audience for a live show is limited to 25,000 people. On TV, she can reach a lot more,” he surmised (120).

  Knowing they had a half-hour prime-time situation comedy as the format they were working with, the first decision to be made was what Miss Midler was going to be. All sorts of fictional situations were proposed. She could be a teacher, she could be a judge, she could be a housewife. What did she want to be?

  Bette started meeting with writers, who bantered around ideas to her. As she explains it, “We took these pitch meetings, and as charming as all those writers were, I kept saying, ‘I can’t have an adopted daughter. I can’t be a ghost. And I don’t want to play a high school principal or a real estate agent’ ” (22).

  Jeffrey Lane was used to working with stars and fashioning shows for them. Among his other credits, he had been the executive producer for the show Mad about You, which starred Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser. He seemed like the perfect choice to work with Midler.

  Bette met Jeffrey Lane for lunch one day at famed Hollywood-area restaurant Spago’s, to see if they could come up with any conclusions as to what Bette’s character should be on the show. Lane recalls, “When I met Bette at Spago—I was too nervous to eat and took my sandwich home. I said, ‘What could be a more interesting character for a television show than Bette Midler?’ It was what seemed right, although I knew we’d have to emphasize her family life. She couldn’t be too glitzy, but I didn’t think that would be a problem, because everybody knows that Bette Midler worked for everything she got. We wanted Bette in real life, with real concerns. On this show, she’s a woman who runs a business, and that business is herself. And that’s how I think a lot of women see their lives: every day presents its own challenges. Her life and career is all our lives and careers. Bette’s experiences are just more heightened” (22).

  As Bette tells of the lunch meeting, “When Jeffrey Lane and I had lunch, he was very dour. He didn’t seem happy. But somehow we got to talking, and he suggested that I play myself. And that was exactly right” (22).

  There had certainly been other television shows semi-based in reality, where real-life comics like Jerry Seinfeld, George Burns, and Jack Benny each played exaggerated versions of themselves. Seinfeld had Elaine, George, and Kramer as his off-the-wall and equally self-centered friends. George Burns had his talented comedienne wife—Gracie Allen—as his foil. Stingy Jack Benny had his butler, Rochester, to banter with and to put Benny in his place. In theory, it could have worked for Bette. However, it was to end up a hug
e mistake in the long-run.

  Hoping that the Bette show could have the same kind of kooky supporting characters as the show Seinfeld, Midler commented, “Everyone wants me to have a Kramer. I say, “I am Kramer.’ I want to have only straight people around me” (22). Unfortunately, it meant that the entire weight of the show was going to rest on her shoulders.

  Bette told Lane about her life and her business partner, Bonnie Bruckheimer, and her long-time musical director and occasional producer, Marc Shaiman. She told him about her daughter and her husband.

  When Bette and Bonnie Bruckheimer told Lane some of the crazy stories about their working relationship, he took notes, and that relationship became the basis for the TV character named Bette and the one who was to be called Connie—fictional Bette’s manager.

  They took the character that was Marc Shaiman and developed him into Oscar, fictional Bette’s gay musical director. They named the daughter Rose, for good luck, and real-life Martin von Haselberg was morphed into the fictional Roy.

  According to Bruckheimer, “It captured an exaggerated version of our lives. I took it to Bette and she laughed out loud” (173). It was Bette Midler’s real life—but not really.

  At the time, Shaiman thought it was a good idea for Midler to pursue a field in television. “They didn’t know what to do with Bette in movies. She’s one of the last real entertainers. For her, that’s like breathing in and out, but movies want a certain type, doing certain types of roles. That’s not Bette. Her talent is limitless, and that’s why this show might be great” (22).