Bette Midler (22 page)

Bette made more headlines later that week when she went to Boston to accept the 1976 Hasty Pudding Award from Harvard University as its “Woman of the Year.” She decided to give them a little more of herself. When she strutted up to the stage to accept her award, she swung open the back of her slit dress to “moon” the audience with her bare derriere. The audience and the press flipped out over the audacious Miss M. Over the next week, several publications carried a shot of Bette—turning the other cheek, so to speak—for all of Harvard to see. Oh, the joys of higher education!

On the Chicago leg of the “Depression Tour,” Bette received some bad press through a misunderstanding. The item that appeared in print quoted Bette as saying, “I have no gay friends. I wouldn’t know a homosexual if I saw one” (
8
). This did not sit too well with the gay community, which comprised the largest segment of her most devoted fans.

The incident was later explained by a member of her entourage. According to the source, “There was a journalist who was not friendly, and she managed to get through to Bette at her hotel at eleven in the morning. In those days, Bette slept until two or three in the afternoon, and she gets Bette on the phone and says ‘I’m so-and-so from the
Chicago Tribune.’
And Bette says, ‘Yes?’ ‘Tell me about your gay audience.’ At that point Bette was tired of being hounded about that all of the time, because she had already gone on to a big crossover audience, but everyone was refusing to acknowledge her. That was when she said this, just like, ‘Ugggh, leave me alone,’ and she hung up on the journalist. The journalist immediately rushed into print with that statement” (
35
).

The tour was fraught with pressure for Bette. Although she was playing every night to cheering crowds, she knew that Aaron, Atlantic Records, and now even she herself was disappointed by the less-than-warm reception her latest album was receiving. It failed to even enter the Top 40 on the American album charts and sold less than 500,000 copies. When the tour reached Detroit, Bette called an important meeting of her entire troupe after one of the shows. For this particular meeting she had several dozen cream pies delivered to one of the hotel conference rooms. What ensued was one of the biggest and silliest food fights that the Motor City had ever seen. They left the poor room a virtual snowbank of whipped cream and pie remnants.
By this point in the trip, Bette had to let off some steam . . . and this seemed like quite an effective way to bring some of the joy back to the tour.

One of the most important stops on “The Depression Tour” was Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Cleveland that the entire show was videotaped for an upcoming Home Box Office (HBO) television special. After years of negotiating back and forth with ABC-TV for a cleaned-up and watered-down version of Bette, Aaron had struck a deal with HBO to tape and broadcast her act totally uncensored, as only cable television could do. Also, Atlantic Records made a complete audiotape recording of several of the Cleveland shows for an upcoming “live” album. Atlantic was convinced that the producers of her studio albums were failing to capture her essence and her humor on record. The executives at Atlantic were determined to capture the excitement of an evening with Bette on vinyl.

After four months, in the spring of 1976, “The Depression Tour” came to its final destination: Caesar’s Palace, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The gig was great for earning quick cash, but it seemed that no one in the Vegas audience had any idea who on earth Midler was or what her unique sense of humor was all about. In a town where moderately talented TV stars were big draws, Bette’s witty humor was lost on the crowds. According to Bruce Vilanch, the only segment of the show that went over well was “The Vicki Eydie Show,” which was assumed to be presented in total seriousness.

One night backstage during the Vegas engagement, word circulated among the troupe that
The Fabulous Bette Midler Show
was going to debut on June 19 on HBO as a television show, and that a “live” album had also been recorded, and that no one but Bette and Aaron were going to receive one cent of extra pay for either project. Well, it was like
Mutiny on the Bounty
in Vegas that particular evening. The Harlettes and the entire band threatened to walk out on the next show if the situation wasn’t resolved. Somehow a settlement was reached, but the episode did nothing to improve Bette’s relationship with her band, with her singers, or with Aaron.

Fortunately, when the Cleveland concert was broadcast on HBO as
The Fabulous Bette Midler Show
, it was a roaring success. Whatever disenchantment the
Songs for the New Depression
album had created with her fans and her critics, the TV special quickly eclipsed.

Since the beginning of “The Depression Tour,” Bette had lost her appendix, flashed two audiences, been banned from three hundred RKO radio stations, seen her band arrested, released a “bomb” album, lost her confidence, and regained her composure. Was she upset? To sum it all up in her own words: “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke!”

The next two years for Bette Midler were highlighted with several peaks and marred by several disappointing valleys. On the positive side of things, she fell in love with an actor, starred in an Emmy Award-winning TV special, released a critically successful live album, and embarked on a sold-out global concert tour. On the negative side, the Harlettes left her for their own career as a trio, she released her poorest-selling studio album to date, her rented house in Los Angeles was robbed, and Aaron drove her crazier than ever before.

It was that same year that Bette admitted publicly that what she wanted most in the world was to become a movie star. Many of her most famous songs, especially “Hello in There,” “Delta Dawn,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” and “Superstar,” were essentially acting pieces set to music. According to her, “I have definite feelings about the songs I sing and I try to convey that to my audiences. Like ‘Do You Want to Dance?’—most singers wouldn’t have sung it the way I did, making people think of Saturday night dances” (
8
). Since her stage show was filled with characters like Vicki Eydie and Nanette, the bag lady, why not go all the way with acting?

“I’d like to become a great actress—there, it’s out!” she declared during “The Depression Tour.” “I started that way, you know. I studied with [Lee] Strasberg—I didn’t understand a blinking thing! They had no sense of humor—and I’ve learned a lot since. I’d like to do a comedy full of whimsy. I’d like to make a perfect comedy, the perfect musical,
the perfect melodrama. Anything less than that will be dissatisfying. I’d like to do a classic, sure, I can take direction: that’s not the hard part. The hard part is figuring out yourself, being able to churn up all those instincts and make it yourself” (
54
).

In an effort to move her career into more artistically challenging areas, Bette held a press conference to announce that her next project would show off more than just her self-proclaimed “brains, talent, and gorgeous tits.” It was going to show off her taste and refinement as well. Bette heralded the fact that she was going to sing and dance with the New York City Ballet in its upcoming production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s light opera
The Seven Deadly Sins
.

The production got under way on schedule in early 1977. Bette was already involved in rehearsals. The ballet’s famed director, George Balanchine, had posed for several promotional portraits with Bette, which were photographed by Richard Avedon. Unfortunately, a strike by the Ballet Musicians’ Union put the whole event on ice. The strike dragged on, and Bette became entrenched in two new projects that took precedence. Recording her next album and taping her years-in-the-planning network TV special caused scheduling conflicts, and, unfortunately, Bette’s ballet debut was never rescheduled.

For more than three years ABC-TV had tried to come to satisfactory creative terms for a Midler special, and still no plan had been agreed upon. Finally, Aaron worked out a mutually agreeable plan of action with NBC, and Bette began rehearsals for
Ol’ Red Hair Is Back
, which was to begin taping in California in May of 1977.

Meanwhile, Bette had fallen madly in love with a young actor named Peter Riegert. She had gone out one night in New York City to see the Off-Broadway show
Sexual Perversity in Chicago
, and Peter was in it. (The play was later made into the 1986 film
About Last Night
.) Bette visited Riegert backstage after the performance, and, according to her, she was immediately attracted to him. “There was this guy with this beautiful face and this great body and these gorgeous eyes and this wonderful manner,” she recalls (
71
).

“ ‘Well, let’s just go out for a little drinkie, what do you say?’ ” Bette asked Peter. “So we got drunk and I asked him if he was listed, ’cause I’d like to call him up. Sometimes I think I’m turning into a man, and it scares me!” she exclaimed (
71
).

They hit it off immediately. They both loved to go out and see old movies and act silly with each other. The relationship was just what she
needed. It took away a lot of the pressure of being an unapproachable “star.” With Peter, she could just act like an eccentric girl in love.

Peter genuinely cared about Bette, and even the Harlettes commented that whenever he was around Midler, she seemed calmer and more centered. On top of that, he understood the insanity of life in show business. He was later to find fame of his own in the cult comedy film
Animal House
, as Boon, the fraternity social chairman. Although their love affair didn’t last forever, their friendship has, and in the 1990s, when Bette starred in a new filmed version of
Gypsy
, she cast Peter in the role of Herbie, Mama Rose’s lover.

As their relationship was just beginning, Bette did her best not to show up at public functions with Peter, in an effort to keep her affair with him private. However, since they both lived in New York City, it wasn’t long before members of the fifth estate took note. Gossip columnist Liz Smith meant no harm when she casually mentioned to her daily newspaper column that Bette and Peter were dating. It was just another gossip item to Liz, but Bette saw it as an invasion of privacy and none of the public’s business.

Bette was so worked up about it that she picked up the phone, dialed Liz Smith’s number, and let the journalist have a piece of her mind. Said Midler, “I think my WORK is important! The cult of personality has exploded and it keeps people from knowing the real artist through the one reality—their work or their art. People should be interested in ideas rather than in a performer’s private life. So I think people have their priorities all screwed up. I want to be known, evaluated, judged from my work alone. What I do otherwise is nobody’s business!” (
72
).

“Let’s be realistic,” she continued on the subject, “I don’t think the public is craving to know who I sleep with or what I ate for breakfast. My God, look at Cher. She can’t even break a nail without having to give an interview about it. That stuff takes all the mystery away. I mean, it whittles your heroes down to nothing, doesn’t it?” (
72
).

Said Liz Smith in retaliation, “When a performer goes up to accept an award at Harvard and flashes a bare backside at the boys, or says vulgar things on [her] Home Box Office concert, it naturally gets them and their giant talents talked about. And then people want to know more about their inside story and the way they live off stage” (
72
).

Since the cat was already out of the bag, it wasn’t long before Bette began to discuss the details of her affair with Riegert openly. According to her at that time, “Peter is the first man I’ve really felt this way
about—been able to be myself with. I’ve got all these crazy characters living inside of me, and I always have to act them out. Most people think I’m nuts. Not Peter. He has his own set of characters. We give each other a show every night till we collapse about four in the morning. It’s great!” (
17
).

That February, after years of putting down Los Angeles, Bette decided to give the West Coast a try. In May of 1977 she appeared on a Bing Crosby TV special, and she sang a standout version of “Glow Worm,” on which she was joined by the Mills Brothers. Reportedly, even her father tuned in to see her in that particular show. It was one of the only occasions Fred Midler saw his daughter perform. After all, he figured, how obscene could she be on the same stage with Bing Crosby?

In its April 1977
Album Reviews
bulletin, sent out to the press, Atlantic Records announced the release of Bette’s fourth album, the two-record set
Live at Last
, which was taped in concert the year before at the Cleveland Music Hall. According to the press release, “The new double live set is the necessary step in her recorded career—bridging the gap between studio and stage” (
73
). However, several sources confirm that many of Bette’s vocal performances on this album were rerecorded in the studio to make them sound closer to the studio-quality performances of her previous albums. Hence, on the back of the album jacket appear the words “produced by Lew Hahn” and “remote recording produced by Arif Mardin.” Atlantic Records was taking no chances with this album. It was, as Atlantic had hoped, a critical hit, and it did enter the Top 40 album charts, at Number 49, but it wasn’t the million-selling smash Atlantic had aimed for.