Bette Midler (4 page)

Bette has been captured on film and on record many times over the past four decades, but to really understand and appreciate her as a performer, one must see her live in concert. Few stars expend so much energy and share so much of themselves with an audience as she does. In her ever-changing stage show she has invented several different personas to bring to life her most outrageous antics. First and foremost, there is her bawdy and trashy diva, “the Divine Miss M.” When she tells dirty jokes, she is Soph, the sluttish vaudeville-like comedienne, who was originally modeled after Sophie Tucker. There is Vickie Eydie, the cheesy lounge singer who is trapped in a tacky nightclub act not of her own design. There’s the Magic Lady—also known as Nanette, the forlorn shopping bag woman who turns despair into optimism. Bette’s screaming rock & roll blues-singer persona is clearly an extension of the
fictional character she portrayed in
The Rose
. And last but not least: Dolores De Lago, the Toast of Chicago, the schmaltzy songstress in a mermaid suit.

Bette has always held the great female vocalists in high esteem. Her long-time favorites include Aretha Franklin, Edith Piaf, and Bessie Smith. However, there are also a few singers of whom she has never been too fond. This list includes Helen Reddy—“She
should
be singing ‘I am Woman.’ Who could tell?” (
6
); the Carpenters: “I can’t believe I’m on the same stage where Karen Carpenter got her drums banged!” (
6
); and Madonna: “The only thing that girl will ever do like a virgin is have a baby in a stable!” (
7
). In 1999 Midler scored her first Number 1 dance hit, by singing the celebratory song of self-deification “I’m Beautiful.” In other words: Don’t cross this diva!

“In your young life, you rebel against values you think are square. After you’ve lived awhile, you realize they are good values, and there’s a reason they’ve been around for thousands of years” (
8
). Wait a minute, Bette said that? She couldn’t have possibly said that . . . not “the Divine Miss Midler!” Oddly enough, she did. Although she certainly had her “wild” phase, underneath the profanity-spewing surface she is a very moral person, with a steadfast work ethic. She has made her way up the ladder of success due to her hard work and single-minded determination. She once proclaimed that what she most wanted to become was “a legend.” It is a goal she has amply accomplished.

In addition to being the number one “taste-free” purveyor of “trash with flash,” Bette Midler is also a devoted wife and mother, as well as a passionate activist when it comes to human rights issues. In the 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic ran like the “black plague” through the gay population, Midler became one of the few stars in Hollywood to give open, compassionate, and undying support to the community. In the 1990s she turned her focus from “trashy” songs to helping the environment by cleaning up real trash in the parks and highways of America. When the World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists in September of 2001, Midler toured Ground Zero and sang her poignant anthem “The Wind beneath My Wings” at the memorial service, which was held in Yankee Stadium that same month.

Has movie stardom changed Bette Midler? Is she still the mud-flinging
woman who insults public figures, or is she now a tasteful housewife whose fashionable home has been featured on the pages of
Architectural Digest?
What was the reason for her sudden move from Coldwater Canyon in Los Angeles back to New York City in the ’90s? Has Bette Midler really killed off her wild alter ego, the Divine Miss M, and become a full-fledged adult? Unthinkable!

In the mid-1980s, after a decade of divine madness and outlandish behavior, Bette announced, “I’ve sown all my wild oats. . . . I’m prepared to settle down and be a mom, because I’ve had twenty years of real nuttiness” (
9
). Oh my God . . . had too much avocado dip at too many Hollywood parties mellowed her out to the point of no return? The sarcastic no-holds-barred Bette once said, “What I want is to be a bisexual fantasy. I want to be the most loved, the most desired loved woman on this earth” (
6
). Is she still the multisexual Peter Pan-like diva for all seasons? Or, has she forsaken her convention-defying silliness to become one of
The Stepford Wives
?

Has time tamed the outrageous Bette? Or is the calmer, more contained side of Miss M simply another facet of this original show-business gem? Predictability has never even entered the mind of this divine queen of camp. There are many sides to Bette Midler and always have been. Has the role as mother and wife changed her forever? “Do you mean am I going to remain
vul-gah
and crass?” she laughingly counter-questions (
10
).

These and several other mysteries in the vivid life of Bette Midler beg to be answered. How did she end up in an all-male gay bathhouse? Why did Paul Simon strip off her vocals on his recording of “Gone at Last” and replace her with Phoebe Snow? What is the truth about her clashes with Bruce Springsteen? Who did Ken Wahl have to pretend to be kissing to get through the filmed love scenes with her on camera? Did she jinx
Jinxed
, or was she set up as the “fall girl” for a picture that was doomed from the start? What compelled her to become one of the first entertainers to openly rally to raise money for the AIDS epidemic? Was she devastated when her 1991 film
For the Boys
received strong critical reviews only to go “bust” at the box-office? Did the huge success of
Gypsy
signal a new Broadway career for her? What is the truth about her long-running feud with Cher? What’s up with her supposed “affair” with journalist Geraldo Rivera? What’s up with that? What the hell was Midler thinking when she produced that dreadful network television
series—
Bette?
And how on Earth did she get the nickname “Bathhouse Betty?”

To solve the riddle of Miss M, one must go back into her turbulent and colorful past. Back to the days where she used to sit in school and daydream of becoming a sarong-clad movie star like Debra Paget in
Bird of Paradise
. It began in Honolulu, the land of hibiscus leis, grass skirts, and bright floral shirts. The real-life saga of the divine Miss Midler all started with a little girl who had an unhappy childhood and who dared to dream that one day she would become a truly divine star. . . .

World War II had been over for only four months when Fred and Ruth Midler’s third child was born on December 1, 1945, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Like her two sisters before her, she was named after one of her mother’s favorite movie stars. Judy’s name had been chosen for Judy Garland, and Susan’s namesake was Susan Hayward. When it came time to pick the new baby’s name, Ruth decide on Bette, in honor of Bette Davis. Ruth, however, believed the actress pronounced her name “bet,” and the name stuck.

Years later, when she was questioned about her name, Bette Midler laughingly explained, “That’s my real name. You don’t think I’d pick that out of a hat? My dear, if I were looking for a name . . .” (
11
).

The Midlers were one of the few Caucasian families living in the area of Honolulu known as Aiea. Fred worked as a house painter for the United States Navy at the base in Honolulu. The muscular body he had developed working out with weights at the local YMCA in his hometown of Patterson, New Jersey, earned him the nickname “Chesty.” He met and married a girl named Ruth Schindel from nearby Passaic, New Jersey, and together they emigrated to Hawaii in the early 1940s in search of a tropical paradise.

Ruth and Fred’s first home in Hawaii was a converted military barracks near a vast expanse of sugar-cane fields. While Fred worked at naval house painting and other civilian jobs with the navy’s ordinance
detail, Ruth passed her time reading movie fan magazines and sewing. After their three daughters, a son named Danny was born.

“We lived in a fabulous place called Halauua Housing—poor people’s housing,” recalls Bette disdainfully (
12
). One of her first memories is of the sweet scent of oleander blossoms from the bushes that surrounded their apartment building and wafted through the warm tropical air like perfume.

In time the Midlers moved into their own home. Bette explains, “We lived in a really funky house, just like the one in that play
The Effect of Gamma Rays
. My father had machinery all over the place—he had twenty-seven lawn mowers—and my mother always had a stack of sewing up to the ceiling” (
4
).

According to Bette, “Eventually, she and my father bought a couple of houses and fixed them up and had tenants. They were small-time landlords. My mother was extremely talented at it and got a real kick out of that, yet she did it all from her own house. She never had the nerve to go out and get a job; she was TOTALLY house-bound. She wanted to be in the world the way other people were in the world. She was just a housewife, but she wanted to take part” (
13
).

Bette never remembers the atmosphere at home as being happy, in any sense of the word. She describes her dad as “a major tyrant, he would scream and carry on. He thrived on it” (
13
).

She also recalls, “My father was a bellower. To get a word in, you had to bellow back. He loved a good argument, he loved the adrenaline rush” (
14
).

Fred Midler later said of Bette, “The only times she talked back were when I jumped on her. Like most parents, I tended to yell a lot and regret it afterwards. . . . She was rather bossy. She liked to take charge of things and she was
always
talking. Our Bette, she was always a yenta” (
15
).

According to Bette, “My mother was the most negative woman. Hypertense. I saw this misery, this incredible misery that she could not force her way out of, this loneliness and bitterness. But I adored her because I saw in her this somebody who was trying to get out, who had a dream that unfortunately never came true” (
16
).

As a result of a postnatal illness, Bette’s younger brother Danny was left mentally handicapped. This became a source of aggravation for Fred Midler; he was mad that he couldn’t do anything to change his
son’s condition, and he found his attempts to teach the boy extremely frustrating.

“The public health authorities, the social workers wanted to put Danny away, but my parents wouldn’t hear of it,” explains Bette. “This doctor told my mom that Danny’s tongue was too long, and he would have to cut it a bit in surgery. And because the doctor cut it, Danny lost the power of movement there. In other words, the doctor severed some nerves, so Danny wasn’t able to move his tongue anymore. So now he can’t chew, he doesn’t talk quite right. At that time they didn’t have public-school classes for retarded children, so my father taught him. He used to come home from work at about four o’clock every day and sit him down in the rocking chair to teach him to talk, read, write, and add” (
13
).

Bette distinctly remembers her father’s sessions with Danny. “Pa would start off quietly, but by the time four-thirty rolled around, he was screaming at the top of his lungs out of frustration, and Daniel would be crying. He’s not so retarded that he doesn’t know it. But eventually Danny did learn. It took a lot of love for my father to do that. Or some heavy guilt” (
13
).

“I think there are certain things you have to pass through in life in order to come out of the other side,” she concludes (
13
).

Bette recalls that her parents set an example with what they did with their lives, and they instilled a strong work ethic within her. According to her, “We were really poor, and my mother made sacrifices that I can’t even dream of making. My brother was mentally handicapped and they raised him at home. That was a real struggle. They succeeded, but they sacrificed their entire life for it. When you have that example, you never really forget it” (
17
).

With the children in the area, Bette felt like an outcast from an early age. “The kids in the neighborhood were Hawaiians, part Hawaiians, Samoans, and Filipinos” (
12
). She describes her feelings of inadequacy: “At the time I really hated it—I was an alien, a foreigner even though I was born there” (
8
).