Bette Midler

by Mark Bego

  With regard to the cast and crew, she claimed, “I like everybody in it. I’ve met lovely, lovely people. But it’s a huge, huge machine that is absolutely ruthless and you just have to run to keep up.” However, in late 2000 she started admitting, “Oh my God, this is so hard!” (173).

  Bette felt that she would also feature a cavalcade of guest stars on her show. Several of them she got to appear on Bette, including Olivia Newton-John, Danny DeVito, Dolly Parton, Oprah Winfrey, George Segal, the stars of TV’s The View, Tim Curry, and Jon Lovitz. There were several others who flatly declined, including Jack Nicholson, Sally Field, and Candice Bergen.

  She had come up with a great idea for an episode co-starring Sally Field. Explained Bette, “We’ve been having this running feud because she won my Oscar, and you know, I’ve been doing that Adopt-a-High-way thing for years and years. So the Adopt-a-Highway people call me up and say, ‘Your mile is just a mess. We can’t keep your mile in any order. You’d better go see what’s happening. Do you have any enemies?’ So, I go up at night and I see that someone is soiling my mile. But I don’t know it’s Sally because she’s got a bag over her head. I only see the license plate, so I have to go to the DMV [Department of Motor Vehicles]. I’ve never been to the DMV. Go to the DMV and get into the records and find out who it is, and it turns out to be Sally. Isn’t that hilarious? How I really wish she’d do it” (120).

  When Tim Curry guest-starred on the show, he was baffled by the role he would be playing. “It’s very weird,” claimed Curry. “They said, ‘You’ll be playing yourself.’ And I said, ‘Who is that?’ ” (173).

  Bette also came up with a great scene involving a fart. In the episode, she develops laryngitis and cannot talk. The set-up has her in the elevator with someone famous, who farts. When other people on the elevator make disgusted faces, the celebrity says something to the effect of “Oh, Bette, how could you?” and mute Midler has to take the blame for the flatulence.

  Explaining her casting efforts, Midler explained, “I needed a famous person to come and fart. Candice Bergen said, ‘I wanted to do it, but I ran it by my people and they didn’t embrace the idea.’ I wanted to say, ‘Well, why not?” recalled Bette. Determined to find a big-name celebrity to do the fart joke scene, she started thumbing through her own phone book. According to her, she next called up Jack Nicholson. “I called him up and he was very amused, but he wouldn’t do it. I said, ‘Jack! You’re just up the road, come on down!’ He said, “I don’t do TV.’ I said, ‘Well, you don’t do TV yet, babe!’ ” (173).

  When she couldn’t find a celebrity to come on her show and fart, she simply rewrote the scene to include a character actor with the gas problem. It became the character of Bette’s analyst, who announces in the elevator that she is on a new vegetarian diet and has a gas problem, just before she farts and then she blames it on Bette.

  On the second show Miss M is shown winning an award for a guest-starring role on the military TV show JAG. David James Elliot, one of the stars of JAG, makes a guest appearance. When Bette accepts another award later in the show, George Segal appears as himself, honoring her in a filmed tribute. There is a running gag in this show that her movies move with rapid succession in and out of theaters, to become Grade-B in-flight film entertainment. On the third show, Dolly Parton appears as herself, taping a TV appearance with Bette.

  On the episode with Oprah Winfrey, Bette was invited to participate on an “Oprah’s Book Club” segment. When Midler overbooks herself, she neglects to read the book being discussed in the interview and attempts to bluff her way through it—only to make a fool of herself. In another episode, Bette attempts to obtain great seats at an L.A. Lakers basketball game for Roy. She ends up dislocating the finger of star player Kobe Bryant and performs as a cheerleader along with the Laker Girls.

  On the episode co-starring Tim Curry, Bette talks her way into a production of Hamlet. When she cannot seem to remember the speeches, she turns her performance into an Elizabethan version of the Divine Miss M. One episode co-starred TV journalists Joy Bahar, Lisa Ling, Merideth Vierra, and Star Jones of The View. Bette gets caught in a white lie, claiming she saved a drowning boy. When the hostesses of The View want her to bring the boy on the show as a guest, Bette is forced to hire a boy to pretend he was rescued by her.

  Actually, two of the best episodes came along just before the end of the run of Bette. In one called “The Invisible Mom,” Bette becomes a volunteer at Rose’s school and wrangles with another of the moms—Olivia Newton-John. In an episode called “Poltergeist,” Jon Lovitz moves into Bette’s house when his is being remodeled. Wanting to appear generous, Midler lets him stay, while he slowly drives her nuts. He tries to convince Bette that there is a “black cloud” of misfortune over her house and that she should sell. Lovitz has the best line, basting a turkey in Bette’s kitchen. With turkey baster in hand, he announces, “Gobbles needs a bath.”

  Bette also used the series to publicize her new album. It seemed that every week she was able to insert one song or another from the Bette LP. One particular episode centers around a recording session for the song “Color of Roses.” When Bette invites Oscar to produce a song for her new album, always-in-control Bette can’t decide how to do the song. Along the way, she performs the song in a disco version, a rap version, a Jamaican reggae version, and even a gospel version. Finally, she decides to go with Oscar’s original concept, the simple ballad version of the song.

  Somewhere along the line, the show went from being “exhilarating” to “exhausting.” On the set of Bette, Los Angeles Times reporter Clara Hall observed Midler up close during a TV taping. In an article called “Hard Work If You Can Get It,” Hall claimed, “Devoid of makeup she looks like the plain-faced, 54-year-old businesswoman that she is” (173). Break out the kitty litter!

  According to Bette, “It’s very fast. I had no idea. I called Candy Bergen and she said, ‘It’s a dream job, but you don’t go to the bathroom for the first year.’ The other day I said, ‘I have no time. I can’t go to the bathroom.’ And they said, ‘Well, you went yesterday’ ” (22).

  It wasn’t long before reports of extreme diva exhaustion began to be emitted from the set of Bette. The show hadn’t been on the air a month when the National Enquirer printed the story “Bette Midler’s Secret Agony—Pals Fear She’s Heading for a Second Breakdown!” In the publication’s November 7, 2000, issue, “a source close to the star” was quoted as claiming, “Bette’s trying to star, produce, direct and design the entire show herself. . . . One minute she’s bursting into tears, the next she’s screaming her head off. . . . Then, if she yells at someone, a half hour later she’s trying to make it up to them by trying to make them laugh. . . . She’s a bundle of nerves. She misses her family desperately and she internalizes everything. She can’t take much more of this” (186).

  The article also quoted “a source close to the show,” who confirmed Midler’s obsession with the series, “She oversees everything right down to the tiniest details—like small props of her TV bedroom. . . . She picks over every scene in every script. If something isn’t funny to her, she’ll make them rewrite it—right there on the stage” (186). Something was rotten in Bette TV land.

  In the December 18, 2000, issue of People magazine, more serious problems on the set of Bette came to light—regarding further cast changes. A color publicity photo of the original cast of the show was depicted, with everyone exuding optimistic smiles. Over the faces of Kevin Dunn and Lindsay Lohan were red circles with slashes through them. Dunn was suddenly out of Bette. The article claimed, “CBS rep Beth Haiken calls the split amicable and ‘mutual.’ Dunn declined comment” (187). The cast of Bette was very quickly turning into a dwindling party. With the exit of Kevin Dunn from the cast, clearly the show was also fast becoming a sinking ship, and with Midler at the helm, the good ship Bette was taking on more and more water in a choppy ratings sea.

  Disparaging remarks from the diva herself were also fanning the fla
mes of disaster. When she went on The Late Show with David Letterman, Bette claimed of filming this show, “It’s like being a dung beetle pushing this ball of dung up a mountain.” She also underscored that comment by calling her show “the lowest thing that ever happened to me.” When she appeared on the afternoon talkshow The View, she went so far as to intimate that she was so disheartened by Bette that she might just go into retirement after this debacle comes to a conclusion. On The View she also stated, “It’s really much more stressful than I thought” (187).

  The reviews in the press were getting progressively worse and worse. In the Los Angeles publication LA Weekly, reviewer Robert Lloyd found, “Bette Midler is the star driving the vehicle called Bette, and she’s pedaling hard to make it go. I like Midler—she’s an Ethel Merman for our times. Brassy is the good old word for her. She paints in broad strokes, and is not above grabbing her tits for a laugh. . . . As Midler’s manager/pal, Joanna Gleason, whom it is always nice to see, plays Ethel to her Lucy, letting loyalty override common sense. . . . The show is funny in bits and in other bits it is not, and on the whole one wishes it were a little funnier a little more often, for Midler’s sake as well as ours” (188).

  People magazine pointed out, “Would Bette Midler be doing her flamboyant clowning on CBS’s Bette if 50 years earlier Lucille Ball hadn’t gotten tipsy on spoonfuls of Vitameatavegamin or wrestled a grape-stomping Italian woman in a wine vat? Doubtful” (189).

  It was clear to everyone that Bette was trying her damnedest to do I Love Lucy, year 2000–style. Resorting to slapstick humor to drive this show was a huge mistake. Bette Midler is so sharp, so intelligent, and so funny on her own, she didn’t need to stoop to facial mugging and pratfalls. This show should have been on a par with Murphy Brown or Absolutely Fabulous—instead of with My Mother the Car.

  There was no question that Bette was trying to make it all work. But it wasn’t long before juggling the cross-country commuting and work on the show got to her. “I know I’m going to do the best work I possibly can,” she claimed. “And I think I’m going to have a lot of fun. But the workload is just so overwhelming. I don’t want to be a bad sport, but it’s hard,” she complained. “When they say this is a dream job, they lie, lie, lie. I staggered all week. I was dying. I was dead on my feet. I had no idea. No idea. I’ve worked hard before, but never this hard. I am dumbstruck” (22).

  With Kevin Dunn out of the picture, they decided to write Roy out of several of the scripts, concentrating on Bette and Connie in some out-of-town situation. It was the same way they had replaced Rose, only they waited even longer to debut the new Roy. Robert Hayes, who is most famous for the Airplane! movies, became Bette’s new husband. It was actually a shame that he didn’t play Roy from the beginning, because it looked like the two of them were truly having fun together. The chemistry between Midler and Hayes in the “new Roy” episode of Bette was quite nice.

  It was so ironic that Hays’s debut on Bette was also the last episode of the series. The show was number 16, appropriately entitled “Brand New Roy.” In America, the announcement that Bette was over came on Monday; the show’s last episode ran on Wednesday. That particular episode amusingly made jokes about Roy’s new appearance, likening it to when Bewitched changed the actors who played Darrin, during its long television run.

  The Hollywood Reporter soberly reported the facts: “The Columbia TriStar sitcom starring Bette Midler will have its final airing Wednesday. Production on the show has been shut down after completing 18 episodes of a 22 episode order. Bette had been set to be preempted for two weeks this month to make room for Survivor and CBS’ coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and eye network brass decided it didn’t make much sense to bring the low-rated comedy back after the break” (190). It didn’t get much colder than that.

  The show’s ratings had dropped so low that it wasn’t even worth broadcasting the final episodes, which were already “in the can.” Furthermore, the show had so few viewers the network chose not to even waste its time broadcasting the reruns of episodes previously shown.

  The last two shows that were filmed were broadcast only outside of the United States. One show, #17, was called “The Grammy Pre-Show.” It found Bette scheduled to perform on the Grammy Awards telecast, and the whole family and entourage are invited to join her. Oscar’s grandmother is in town visiting, Connie starts a fashion trend with her new earrings, and Bette keeps trying to destroy her diet—and her ability to fit into her gown—by nibbling constantly. The last one, #18, was called “Method to Her Madness.” In it, Bette sets out on a quest to find the perfect movie role, by doing some real life research on her own. She ends up in a truck stop.

  On behalf of Bette and the All Girls Production company, Bonnie Bruckheimer publicly announced, “Bette and I will miss the very talented group of people whom we had the privilege of working with on a daily basis” (190).

  And that was the sudden and abrupt end to Bette Midler’s brief foray into network television. For Midler, the cancellation of Bette was both a relief and a huge a disappointment.

  21

  EXPERIENCE THE DIVINE

  In what is perceived as a career “failure” of a year for Bette Midler, 2001 was actually a very high-profile one for the diva. On January 7, she was on hand for the telecast of CBS-TV’s annual People’s Choice Awards. The yearly honors are based on a poll that is tallied by the Gallup organization. Both Midler and her show Bette were nominated for awards that evening. Miss M won the trophy as the year’s “Favorite Female Performer in a New Television Series.” The award had nothing to do with ratings or critical perception of the show, but was based on votes from the public. It was an obvious sign that Bette’s personal popularity was—and is—far greater than her highly unpopular TV series.

  Two weeks later, on January 21, 2001, Midler was again nominated for an award because of Bette. This time around it was the Golden Globe Awards, where she was nominated in the category of “Best Actress in a TV Comedy, Musical, or Variety Series.” However, the award went to the star of Sex and the City, Sarah Jessica Parker. In her acceptance speech Ms. Parker graciously commented from the podium that she personally thought Midler was going to win the trophy. Parker had been Bette’s co-star in both Hocus Pocus and First Wives Club, and her Sex show was truly everything that the Bette show was not: brilliantly written, witty, controversial, sharp, and funny.

  A month afterward, on February 21, Bette and Stevie Wonder were co-presenters of the award for “Album of the Year” at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards, which were broadcast from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. There was quite a bit of controversy in the air that night, due to the number of nominations that misogynist and antigay white rapper Eminem had received—including a nod for the year’s best album. Had he taken the award, several human rights groups were expected to verbally protest from the audience. Looking rock & roll chic in a black leather outfit, Bette motioned to Wonder and quipped from the podium, “I was so nervous I brought the most beloved figure in music to hide behind in case some of you want to rush the stage” (191). Ultimately, it was not Eminem’s album that won the award, but Steely Dan’s comeback disc Two against Nature.

  During an awards show streak, on February 24, 2001, three days after the Grammys, Bette was at the annual TV Guide Awards celebration. Midler and her show Bette were up for three separate awards. She ended up being awarded a trophy for “Actress of the Year in a New Series.”

  Irony of ironies, after personally winning both a People’s Choice Award and a TV Guide Award, on March 5, 2001, CBS pulled the plug on the Bette show. The final episode was broadcast on March 7, and that was the end of the show—no reruns, no big series ending, just the axe. Bette had such high hopes for her TV series. It was a tremendous risk for her to embark upon, and she was crushed when it all came to a dead halt.

  According to an article in Inside magazine, on March 21, 2001, Midler promptly fired the talent agency she had been signed to, Endeavor. Sh
e had been with the firm over the past five years. It had seemed that the agency had steered her into one career blunder after another.

  On April 17, 2001, Bette was all smiles when she attended the first anniversary party celebrating the publication of Oprah Winfrey’s monthly magazine, O. She looked great posing for photos with Winfrey, wearing a tasteful black suit and a blue-patterned silk scarf around her neck.

  According to a May 2 Reuters wire service story, the mystery of whom Midler would choose to next professionally represent her was solved when it was announced that she had been signed by International Creative Management (ICM). It would now be handling all of her business affairs and hopefully would steer her into clearer waters than Endeavor had.

  At the end of April it had been announced that Bette, together with her business partner Bonnie Bruckheimer, would pen a book about the disastrous Bette TV show experience. They were talking with Simon & Schuster Publishers about writing a bitter tome called Canceled. However, on May 7, only two weeks later, Canceled had also been canceled. Speculation around the project suggested that the reason was that since both Simon & Schuster and CBS-TV were owned by Viacom Inc., it would have been a matter of biting the hand that feeds one, to publish a book bashing the same company by which the publisher was owned.

  Midler was one of the stars to appear in New York City on May 22, at a benefit held at the 92nd Street YMCA, called the Spring Gala. Making jokes about her ill-fated TV show, she said snickeringly from the stage, “Los Angeles can be so cold, so cruel, after you’ve been . . . what’s the word? Oh, yes, ‘fired.’ ” She also took time to bash Tom Cruise a bit, pointing out the concurrent tabloid stories questioning his sexuality. Said Miss M, “All these rumors about him being gay. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it for one minute. He hasn’t been to one of my shows!” (192).