by Mark Bego
What were they going to use as a set? How about Bette Midler’s real home? “They took Polaroids,” Bette was to explain. “It’s very odd. My husband thinks the set is not grand enough. He thinks people don’t want to see what my life really looks like, that they want the dream of how a star lives. I say, if they’re looking at the set, I’m in deep trouble” (22).
Bette got a big laugh out of von Haselberg’s first visit to the TV set. “My husband didn’t think it was anything like our house. He keeps saying, ‘Where’s the staff?’ ” (173).
Then came casting. It seemed like a natural choice to see if Marc Shaiman could play the musical director in the series, since the role was based on his own life. According to him, “I even auditioned to play myself. But they decided to go another way” (22). Ultimately, they chose James Dreyfus to play Oscar, Joanna Gleason became Connie, Kevin Dunn was cast as husband Roy, and Lindsay Lohan portrayed daughter Rose.
Character actress Joanna Gleason first found fame when she was cast as the Baker’s Wife in the Stephen Sondheim hit Broadway musical Into the Woods in 1987. Kevin Dunn is most notable for playing a father whose son is embroiled in a murder in Stir of Echoes and as a frustrated military officer dealing with innercity anti-lizard duty in Godzilla.
And, naturally, Bette played Bette. According to her at the time, “This is the ‘me’ that I wish I was. I get to wear beautiful clothes. I wear high heels all day long. And I have a really nice bosom line” (22).
Explaining the vague line between the real Bette and the TV Bette, Midler explained, “Oh, it’s a complete send-up of my life. There’s a little bit of truth in it. But it’s a send-up—it’s a farce” (120).
The reason that it was a huge mistake for Bette to play herself was that she would play the entire series trying to be the most coiffed, most beautiful version of herself. Instead of just letting herself become a character, like the crass Shelley in Outrageous Fortune or even as silly as Lilly in That Old Feeling, she chose to play the one character who made her the most self-conscious—herself. The daughter on the series had to be sweet and behaved, or it would reflect unflatteringly on Bette’s own daughter. The husband on the series had to be good-natured and centered—or it would reflect poorly on Bette’s own husband. They certainly weren’t going to portray him as a man who would wear an inner tube around his waist and exploding whipped cream on top of his head—like the real Harry Kipper had in Mondo Beyondo. Maybe they should have; it would have been a hell of a lot more interesting than the way it unfolded on this series. Furthermore, the Bette on this show was always well-coiffed, in full makeup, and looking fabulous. This meant that all of her comedy had to be isolated to facial expressions, broad gestures, physical humor, and endless mugging.
Both Midler and Jeffrey Lane defended their decisions. According to Lane, “I told her, ‘If you do a show, you really should play yourself because if you do anything else, you’re not going to use everything” (173).
Said Midler, “Because it’s my life. It’s really all I know. I mean, I could play a school teacher, but what’s the point? You know, I could play a librarian or a bookstore owner, but what’s the point? When do I get to be flamboyant and wear my clothes? When do I get to wear my shoes!?” (120).
Regarding the blurry line between fact and fiction, however, she noted, “It isn’t exactly like my life, but it’s enough like my life that it’s very odd.” (173).
On the positive side of things, when Bette filmed her television series, she was thinner than she had been in years. According to her, a case of digestive tract disorder—“I had amoebas or parasites”—left her twenty-five pounds lighter (173). She decided that it was a sign and worked diligently to make certain that the weight did not return. As she went before the TV cameras for her new series, she was totally svelte. And once the series started, she worked such long hours that the weight stayed off effectively.
Since Bette now lived in New York City, it was a natural concept to film the show where she lived. When the pilot episode of Bette was produced, it was done there. There was no theme song to the show, and the cast members seemed to be experimenting with their roles.
To assure the kind of attention for the show that it deserved, Midler asked her friend Danny DeVito to be a guest star on the first episode. In the plot of the pilot, we see a nervous and neurotic Bette backstage at one of her concerts. For the concert footage, they used the opening clip from the Diva Las Vegas show, with Midler descending from the clouds, singing “Friends.” DeVito was in the audience of the show, and at the postconcert party, he is seen meeting with Bette. In the context of their brief scene together, DeVito invites her to appear opposite him on his new—fictional—TV show. Naturally, she agrees. However, she doesn’t exactly know what role she has agreed to play.
There were two running gags that became central elements throughout the run of Bette. They were her own vanity and her supposed food addiction. In the backstage sequences, Bette either had her hand in a tray full of trashy cheese curls or was grabbing things off DeVito’s plate when he wasn’t looking. There is also a running gag on the show that her nemesis is actress Sally Field, since it was Field who took the Academy Award when Midler was nominated for The Rose.
As a unified force, Oscar, Connie, Roy, and Rose all try to keep the news from Bette that the role she has agreed to play is DeVito’s mom. The night after her concert appearance, husband Roy acts amorous toward wife Bette, then falls asleep before she gets into bed. When Midler suddenly erupts into a frenzy of activity on exercise machines and extreme dieting, the rest of the cast assumes that she is upset by being asked to play an older role in the DeVito project. However, her motivation is her desire to be found more sexy by her husband.
Bette did have some funny lines on the show, especially when she was making fun of her own life. On the pilot the fictional Bette announces, “I just don’t know if I should do TV. I’ll have my own series and then I might as well kill myself” (22).
What ends up happening in the pilot is that Bette plays a silly slapstick act on some complicated gym equipment. It was a scene that one might expect Lucille Ball to enact in the 1950s in I Love Lucy. On this particular episode, Bette was trying so hard to act funny that it was not at all funny, just uncomfortably goofy.
Still, the show had some comic potential. On the pilot, Bette is introduced to her daughter’s new boyfriend. When the young teenager claims that he is Midler’s biggest fan, she whispers to her daughter, “He’s gay!”
Joanna Gleason had some great one-liners here and there, which she delivered in a very deadpan style. Basically, she just volleyed one-liners back at Bette, while Midler neurotically talked about herself, food, sex, and her career. As Oscar, James Dreyfus played the role as if he was scared of his own shadow. Since it was established on the show—mainly by Bette’s comments—that Oscar is gay, it gave Midler a top banana to bounce campy jokes and one-liners off and dish with.
However, the absolute weakest link in the show was the character of Roy, fictional Bette’s husband. Their scenes together were dull, lifeless, and completely unbelievable. Never, through all of their episodes together, did Kevin Dunn look like he was either comfortable or enjoying himself. There was “zero” chemistry between them. Furthermore, since Bette insisted that she be the funniest character on the series at all times, all four of her supporting cast members had to play it straight. With the exception of Gleason as Connie, none of the other actors was given much to do, so when Bette wasn’t on camera, the plot completely sagged. And when Bette was on camera, she was working so hard to be funny every second that she wasn’t in the least bit funny.
Based on Bette’s star power and the pilot episode, CBS-TV decided to purchase the series for its fall 2000 prime-time line-up. One of the ways that the network introduces the shows to its affiliate stations is to fly CBS broadcasters from around the country to New York or Los Angeles, to preview the new shows and meet some of the stars. This is known as “upfront” in th
e business. Bette was invited to come to one such presentation at Carnegie Hall, so that the local broadcasters and potential sponsors could see her in action.
As Midler explained this comedy-of-errors, “That announcement is called an ‘upfront.’ Who knew what an upfront was? It was a crazy day. I said to Bonnie, ‘What do you wear to an upfront?’ She said, “I don’t know. What’s an upfront?’ We were clueless. I wore pants and a sweater. I was upset because I had to cross a picket line to get to Carnegie Hall. I went out onstage, and it was very nice. But then, when I left, my car was gone, and I had to take a cab home. When I got out of the cab, my pants ripped up the back, and my doorman got a good look at my whole tweeter. If that had happened fifteen minutes earlier, I would have exposed myself to all those ‘upfronts’ at Carnegie Hall” (22).
When the announcement was made that the Bette show was getting picked up for several episodes, Midler called up her friend, actress Candice Bergen, for advice. Bergan had starred for several very successful seasons in the CBS-TV series Murphy Brown.
According to Bette, “Candice warned me. She said ‘They keep you hopping that first year. This is rough’ ” (173). She had no clue just how rough it was going to get.
One of the first challenges came right off the bat. CBS-TV insisted that the Bette show be filmed in Los Angeles. Bette and her family lived in New York City. She foolishly agreed to fly back and forth between the two cities to work on her show and still have a family life in Manhattan. This would further tap her energy when the show went into full production. This was a huge mistake.
By relocating the production to Los Angeles, the first casting problem arose. Lindsay Lohan, who played daughter Rose, was in school in New York, so she had to be replaced after the first episode. This was another bad omen. The show aired for one week, and there were already cast changes.
The first episode of Bette ran on October 11, 2000, and it did surprisingly well in the ratings. Everyone was encouraged by the viewers that the show drew. However, from that high water mark of the pilot episode, every week that Bette ran it drew less and less viewers. One of the problems was that the show started out opposite the Regis Philbin-hosted game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Apparently, more people wanted to be a millionaire than wanted to see Midler’s moderately amusing show.
Actually, the reviews for the pilot were encouraging. Entertainment industry newspaper Daily Variety was optimistic about Bette, based on its review of that first episode. According to Laura Fries, “Fitting a talent as big as Bette Midler’s onto the small screen is a tough task—it’s an instance where you have to be careful not to do too much or risk looking like you’re just trying too hard. . . . Produced more like a stage play than a TV series, Bette is a show about the performer’s life and career—only a fictional family and friends, à la Seinfeld. The TV version of Bette, we are led to believe, is neurotic and food-obsessed, vacillating between supreme overconfidence and anxiety. . . . Throughout the episode, Midler hoists her bosoms, rants, cries, shouts and mugs for the camera. It’s amusing in small doses, but the jokes that work best play on her film career, including a bit about recycling dialogue from her movies, and an ongoing grudge against Sally Field. . . . Naturally, other actors pale next to Midler, but the star has picked an extremely likable and talented supporting cast” (183).
When Bette saw the script for the second episode, she wasn’t thrilled. Throughout the fall of 2000, rumors ran rampant through Hollywood of trouble on the Bette set. The first problem Midler had was with the writers of the show. According to her, “My only concern is that the show be funny. After the first episode, I marched into the writers’ room and I said, ‘I don’t want titters. I want guffaws.’ They looked at me and said, ‘Yes, Ms. Midler,’ and I got guffaws” (22).
When the ratings dropped off for episodes #2 and #3, Midler got defensive in the press. Furthermore, she started to distance herself from the blame, if anything should go wrong. In October of 2000, she claimed, “I must emphasize the fact that I know nothing. I know nothing about producing for TV, about how they market it—nothing. So when people say to me, “Oh, do know what your time slot is?’ I just look at them blankly, because I have absolutely no idea. Some of them say to me, ‘Do you have any idea how lucky you are?’ And I just have no idea. Everyone is disappointed in the fact that I know nothing. I’m not a television actor” (120).
After the first three episodes were aired, the network was still encouraged that the series could make it. In the October 31–November 8, 2000, issue of the Hollywood Reporter, news of an extension for the Bette show was announced. According to the article, “CBS is beginning to trigger its full-season pick-ups. Sources said the eye network has returned nine episode orders to the new Bette Midler sitcom. . . . Columbia Tri-Star TV’s Bette has delivered CBS’ best numbers in years in the unsheltered Wednesday 8 P.M. slot” (184). However, that decision was based mainly on the viewership of the debut episode.
Slowly, the show was losing a ratings battle. “Okay, let me explain to you, I’m up against Regis!” she argued. “If I fall, what does that mean? Regis is an hour. Do the math. Two half-hours per network. There are three other networks. If I go down, there are five other shows with me” (173).
What she did realize, painfully, was that she had gotten herself seriously in over her head. “It’s an enormous amount of work. And this stuff is very ambitious—I think. Last week, there was a 10-page scene—and a song and a dance and a wig and an Elizabethan ruff. I thought I was going to die,” she claimed (173).
The show was filmed at Culver City Studios on Friday nights in front of a live studio audience. The cameras started rolling around 6:30 P.M., and it would usually end well after midnight. The filming typically went so late that the cast and crew were placing cash bets as to what ungodly hour they would finish up.
According to co-executive producer Janis Hirsch, Midler started insisting on reshooting every scene multiple times: “She always wants to do it one more time because she thinks she can do it better—and she can. I’ve never seen an actress work so carefully” (173).
When the show went into full production, one of the first things they had to do was cast a Los Angeles-based teenage actress to play the part of Rose. They decided on Marina Malota. The young actress recalls that the audition was a breeze for her: “I was calm and just went in and did my lines—and got a lot of laughs. I’ve never been nervous performing for people” (185).
Speaking of her portrayal of the character Rose, Marina explained, “[She] loves her mother, but knows that her mom can also be a little silly about things sometimes. They have a really strong relationship. . . . The lines are like a mother/daughter conversation in real life, so it’s natural for me. Since Bette is just awesome and has a daughter a year older than me, it does feel like she’s a second mom” (185).
The show’s executive producer and director, Andrew D. Weyman, explains that in recasting the role of Rose, they were “looking for someone who could go toe-to-toe with Bette Midler[, which] was a difficult order—and Marina can look Bette in the eye and [quickly] respond. She’s very real, not overly coached and actor-y” (185).
To erase the audience’s memory of the original Rose, on the second show of the series “Rose” is referred to, but is never shown. When the character appears on the third show—the Halloween-themed show—she is played by Marina.
Andrew Weyman is known for having directed TV series with some of the most difficult-to-work-with women in show business: Ellen De-Generes in Ellen, Rosanne in Rosanne, and Cybill Shepard in Cybill. He then graduated to directing Midler in Bette. According to him, “My agent told me, ‘You have a reputation of being able to work with difficult people.’ I said, ‘Do me a favor, get me a different reputation’ ” (173).
Said Weyman of Bette at the time, “She’s one of the most interesting blends of insecurity and courage in an actor that I’ve ever seen” (173).
Filming a new episode every week proved a new kind of
working experience for Midler, and a fast-paced one at that. “Making the pilot was so much fun,” she claimed. “I hadn’t used all these skills in a while. But now that we’re on the third show, I can see that it’s almost too much. If the script is at 20 percent on Monday, by the time you get to Friday, you have to work 1,000 percent to get the show to work. That is brutal. I find that process really exciting. Up to a point” (22).
When Martin von Haselberg was asked whether or not his relationship with the real Bette was anything like the TV version, he replied, “The husband on the show is a calming, objective person who is married to this tornado—a leveling influence. That does bear some resemblance to our actual relationship. She is a person with inexhaustible amounts of energy—sometimes I think I can persist in directing that when it’s at risk of losing direction. Many people warned against her doing this. They said the format of TV is too small for her. But look at I Love Lucy—a huge show on the small screen” (120).
As it often is in network television, very often the show’s scripts were being developed as they went along, throughout the week. If a joke or a situation didn’t seem to work, it had to be rewritten. “You have to be on your toes. The entire time you’re doing it, they’re rewriting and they’re feeding you lines. If you snooze, you lose. When it’s done, you’re flying,” Midler claimed (1).
One of the biggest challenges of taping this show was that it was performed in front of a live studio audience. Explained Bette of performing in this way, “You’re not supposed to play to the audience, but you have to be aware of them enough so that you use their laughs for timing” (173).
As the pace of the show’s filming schedule picked up, it became more and more difficult for Bette to control the variables. “Some things are hits and some things are misses,” she said during the show’s production. “You go on. The idea is to last and to do your work. This is the road I took and this is what happened once I got on the path. Maybe another fork in the road will come. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about getting stopped and having nervous breakdowns and slashing your wrists because you didn’t get a job” (173).