Bette Midler (51 page)

Written by Brinsley Evans and produced by Arif Mardin, this snappy, bitchy rap proved once and for all that Midler was at the top of her game. As she explained it at the time, “I rap lite on ‘I’m Beautiful.’ I have an excellent sense of time. I was thinking of taking up the bass or drums because I like rhythm. The problem is, I have nothing to say. What am I going to rap about? My hairdresser? My nails? Actually, that could be fun!” (
169
).

And speaking of hairdressers, that’s exactly how she came upon the song to begin with. “My hairdresser tells me what’s happening,” she admitted. “He brought me ‘I’m Beautiful,’ I was determined to do it because I really liked the message. Did you know that’s Zero Mostel [‘sampled’ on the song] saying, ‘Flaunt it, baby,’ from
The Producers
?” (
169
). The song is laugh-out-loud funny to hear, and Midler clearly projects the joyousness of singing such a fun message of self-deification.

After the goofiness of “I’m Beautiful” comes one of the most touching ballads that Bette has ever sung. “Lullaby in Blue” is about a mother trying to explain her life to the daughter she gave up for adoption several years previously. Sad, bittersweet, touching, and incredibly heartfelt, it is the album’s “Hello in There”-styled moment. Written by Brock Walsh and Adam Cohen, and produced by Walsh, “Lullaby in Blue” is perfect for Midler.

Spotlighting her Hawaiian roots, Midler presents a song that was written in 1925 about the fiftieth state, “Ukulele Lady.” She had never recorded a Hawaiian-styled ode, and the song conjures up images of grass skirts, flower leis, and brassieres fashioned of coconut shells.

Mark Shaiman’s production contribution on
Bathhouse Betty
comes on “I’m Hip,” which reprises the formula of “I’m Beautiful” in a ’50s jazz mode. With Midler comically singing that she’ll do anything to be hip—from narcotics, to meditation and macrobiotics.

One of the 1930s chestnuts that Midler sang back in the days at the Continental Baths was “I Sold My Heart to the Junkman.” It was revived in the 1960s when it was recorded by Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles. Bette was originally going to use this song on the opening of her
Live at Last
album, but changed her mind and did “Oh My, My” instead.
It was worth the wait for this one, presented by her like a song suited for a singer in a smoke-filled bar and lounge.

A big and bawdy performance is what Bette gave to the 1955 song “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show.” Not to be confused with the hit of the same name by the 1970s trio, Honey Cone, this one has Bette—in the context of the song—getting rid of her lover at three o’clock and having a new man by her side by the time the clock struck “four.” A jazzy Ted Templeman production, this song is as big and brassy as Midler herself and shows off her full talents—complete with a wailing horn section.

Other excursions into the bizarre find Bette singing about the life of a boxer on the song “Boxing” and about the relationship between shoe size and penis size on the snappy “Big Socks.” “Boxing,” which was a Ben Folds Five song, finds Midler singing of her career in the ring. It didn’t necessarily suit her, subject-wise, but it was fun to hear her present an off-the-wall story song. “Big Socks” is a lunatic upbeat song in which Bette pokes air in the supposed relationship between “big feet” and “big meat.” Unabashedly singing about male sexual organ dimension, Midler tells an underendowed suitor to take his equipment “back to the kiddie section.” Only Bette could sing this kind of quirky material with a straight face and musically pull it off.

She finishes off the album in ballad mode with “That’s How Love Moves,” “My One True Friend,” and “Laughing Matters.” The best of the three here is “My One True Friend,” which was written by a stellar trio of true songwriting pros: David Foster, Carole King, and Carole Bayer Sager. The sentimental number about friendship and devotion “My One True Friend” was used as the theme song for the 1998 Merle Streep film
One True Thing
.

In fact, the whole film heavily features songs by Bette Midler. In addition to hearing “Do You Wanna Dance?” and “Friends” on the soundtrack, Miss M also contributed the brand-new “My One True Friend.” According to Bette, “Meryl Streep called me up and said, ‘I’m doing this movie, and we want to use your songs.’ What do you say to that? ‘No?’ ‘I’ll get back to you’? ‘My people will call your people’? You say, ‘Of course, Meryl! How’re things? How’re the kids? Of course!’ ” (
169
).

The
Bathhouse Betty
album was a huge hit with Midler fans. It really marked a return to the kind of album that first established her recording career. The heavily varied material on this disc and the sincerely devoted
performances by Bette make this one of her all-time great albums. Furthermore, the Japanese version of this album features a bonus track, called “Happiness.”

The song “I’m Beautiful” was a natural selection for a single—and what a huge hit single it became. Remixed in seven different varieties, and put on a special CD single, “I’m Beautiful” became Midler’s first Number 1 single on the Dance charts. Not only was she beautiful; she had a hit, DAMN IT!

Trying to get herself—and her music—some radio air time alongside a whole new generation of stars was proving daunting for Midler. She observed during this era, “People past a certain age have been shut out of the business. I remember when rock came in, Benny Goodman and Frank Sinatra couldn’t get on the radio. It must’ve been painful. Now I know what it feels like” (
169
).

She also claimed at the time that she was already planning her next album. “I want to sing ‘Moonlight in Vermont.’ I’d like to sing some true Hawaiian music, and I would like to sing ‘I like Bananas because They Have No Bones.’ ” When she was asked if she had any duets she was considering recording, she replied, “Missy Elliott. I like her a lot. She makes me laugh. She’s really musical and kinda sorta fearless. I like the way she looks. I like the way she carries herself” (
169
).

In December of 1998 Bette was busy promoting her
Bathhouse Betty
album, which hit Number 32 on the
Billboard
pop charts in America. The week of the fifth of December in the U.K., her British single “My One True Friend” appeared on the record charts, at Number 58. On December 7, she was seen on the TV special
The Billboard Music Awards
, which was being broadcast live from the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas, Nevada. On the show she was seen in another location—via satellite—at the Las Vegas outpost of the Hard Rock Cafe, singing her song “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show,” accompanied by the band the Crown Royal Revue.

On December 11, she appeared in New York City at a concert staged by radio station WKTU. The event was billed as “Miracle of 34th Street,” as it took place at the Hammerstein Ballroom, just down that street from Macy’s department store. Also on the show was the Swedish group Ace of Base, Deborah Cox, and Cher. Cher was in the middle of her massive international come-back tour, with her huge number one hit “Believe.”

The divas hadn’t appeared on the same bill in years and had long
since fallen out of favor with each other. That night Cher was performing three cuts from her
Believe
album. Since several of the songs on the album—particularly, “Believe”—featured audible postproduction special effects, Cher chose to lip-synch her three songs to her recordings, instead of singing them live. Bette Midler, on the other hand, was going to perform her songs live.

First of all, Cher went onstage before Bette, which Midler took offense to, then Cher kept everyone waiting a half-hour while her makeup went through an emergency retouching. Furthermore, Cher forbid any cameras to be used while she sang, in an edict to the press and the public.

Not one to miss a chance to sling a little mud, Midler supposedly snidely said that night: “I’m a star! I’m not someone who used to be famous and is trying to become famous again.” The item was first reported in the
New York Daily News
and then was picked up and repeated in
People
magazine. Although
People
carried the disclaimer “Midler reps deny she made that crack,” it was perceived as being accurately quoted (
170
). Pass the Meow Mix!

On December 17, 1998, Bette appeared on
Late Night with David Letterman
, to further promote her album
Bathhouse Betty
. The week of January 16, 1999, the RIAA certified
Bathhouse Betty
as having gone Gold in the United States. Viva la Bette!

Midler was on hand at the 1999 edition of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame presentation, held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. After the induction ceremony, she got up on stage and boogied with the rock & roll class of 1999.

As the Disney Corporation’s favorite leading lady, in 1999 Bette made yet another appearance in one of the company’s films. This time around, it was in the long-awaited sequel to the company’s most famous experimental classic,
Fantasia
(1940).

The original and renown eight-segment film had teamed state-of-the-art animation with classical music to create a timeless gem. With Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra providing the soundtrack, in 1940 the Disney animators pulled out all the stops to bring them to life with imaginative hand-illustrated screen images. “Dance of the Hours” was presented with hippos and alligators doing a ballet, “Night on Bald Mountain” presented a confrontation between good and evil, and “Tocotta and Fugue” became an abstract visual montage of colors and shapes. However, the best-known segment found
Disney’s leading man, Mickey Mouse, mixing with magic on “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” As the hapless apprentice, the heroic rodent battles against endless buckets of water that enchanted brooms carry—causing a massive flood. The original
Fantasia
film had a single narrator, Deems Taylor, who introduced the individual segments.

It took nearly fifty years to mount a sequel, but the new film is a cinematic masterpiece worthy of bearing the name
Fantasia 2000
. In this fresh version, several of the stars, including Steve Martin, Quincy Jones, Penn & Teller, James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, and Bette Midler, are on hand to play host to the new classical segments.

Fantasia 2000
includes several classic pieces and some modern masterpieces as well. George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” here gets a Manhattanite scenario, artistically inspired by famed caricature artist Al Hirschfeld. And the original centerpiece of the original film, “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is again presented here, immaculately restored with eye-popping colors—starring Mickey Mouse, who looks less grainy and more dazzlingly bright than ever before. Although Donald Duck was missing from the 1940 film, he makes a star turn here on the Sir Edward Elgar march: “Pomp & Circumstance—Marches 1, 2, 3 and 4.”

Bette is on hand to introduce “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” by Hans Christian Anderson, set to Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Piano Concerto No. 2, Allegro Opus 102.” In her brief segment, she looks strikingly glamorous in a black dress and a gold lamé shawl. Her hair is still champagne blonde, but she has an orange spotlight on her, so she is photographed in a warm glow on camera.

Standing on a soundstage against a turquoise blue backdrop, she explains on camera about all of the original
Fantasia
ideas that were scrapped along the way to completing this new animated masterpiece. According to Bette, these included Salvador Dali wanting to do a metaphor of life, comparing it to a baseball game; a darkly illustrated version of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”; a bug ballet; a baby ballet; and even a polka.

In this particular Miss M-introduced segment, it is midnight and all of the toys are coming to life. The whirling music box ballerina and one of the small tin soldiers flirt with one another, while the evil jack-in-the-box jealously looks on and plots to get the soldier out of the picture—and right out of the moonlit room’s window. The action that unfolds, traces the soldier’s daunting path back to defend the ballerina from jack’s advances.

Well, Bette had joked for the last fifteen years that she had been primarily working
for
Mickey Mouse. Now, at long last, here is Bette—literally starring with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck!

The next film Bette was seen in was a satirical comedy called
Jackie’s Back
. It was produced for broadcast on the Lifetime Cable Network and it originally aired June 14, 1999.

Jackie’s Back
is a mock documentary along the lines of comedy classics
Spinal Tap
and
The Rutles
. However, the act that is getting the whole
Behind-the-Music
routine, in this case, is the fictional Jackie Washington. In this full-length film we meet the host of the show-within-a-show:
Portrait of a Diva
, Edward Whatsett St. John (Tim Curry). He proceeds to present Jackie and several of the people from her eventful career and her colorful past.

Jackie is portrayed by one of Bette’s former Harlettes, Jenifer Lewis. As another Harlette to find stardom, Lewis has since been one of the stars of such films as
Corrina Corrina, The Preacher’s Wife
, and
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
Her Jackie is a diva-out-of-control, and she clearly has a ball with this role.

The over-the-top script presents Washington as something of a walking tabloid headline waiting to happen. Among the skeletons from the closet is an examination of Jackie being accused of stabbing her husband in the head with an “Afro pick” haircomb. When the cameras catch up with the ex-husband, his forehead still has the comb’s tooth scars in it. The documentary follows Jackie in her path toward a big comeback performance. Some claim she is a legend, others claim she is little more than a “boozing has-been.”

A who’s who of Hollywood and the music business are featured in the documentary. Either playing roles or playing themselves, celebrities show up discussing Jackie—mostly in a scandalous way. Ricki Lake, Jackie Collins, Grace Slick, Liza Minnelli, and Taylor Dane were among the dozens of cameo appearances in
Jackie’s Back
. Mary Wilson of the Supremes is in the film as Jackie’s third-grade teacher, Vesta Crotchley. Said Wilson of Jackie: “She had the largest boobs—breasts, I have ever seen on an eight-year-old child.”