Bette Midler (25 page)

Arthur Bell, in the
Village Voice
, had the opposite opinion. According to him, “
Broken Blossom
, her latest album, is her best, with hardly any camping, and yet it’s selling worst of all. But to ask that she stretch, expand, play it straight, is tantamount to suggesting that Muhammad Ali go on a parsley diet. As it stands, Bette is neither middle-of-the-road nor far left. She’s stuck in a soft shoulder” (
78
).

According to Brooks Arthur, “ ‘Yellow Beach Umbrella’ could have been a hit. ‘Paradise’ could have been a hit. ‘La Vie En Rose’ could have been a great record overseas, but unfortunately, it was just one of those records. Everyone who I meet—and I’m baffled by this because it doesn’t have a lot of popularity—says, ‘Oh,
Broken Blossom
is my favorite Bette album!’ And I say, ‘Wow!’ But I dug in for those vocals, ‘cuz she gave them to me, and I was able to coax ever better ones out of her. And me being a singer, and having a sixth sense about singers, I was able to burn some great vocals together with Bette” (
77
). Unfortunately,
Broken Blossom
was not the hit album that everyone had hoped for. Had Aaron and Bette listened to Arthur’s advice with regard to “Someone That I Used to Love” and “Gee Whiz,” things might have turned out differently.

While Bette was recording
Broken Blossom
with Brooks Arthur, they had a lot of fun together. Remembers Brooks, “I took her to a baseball game one time at Dodger Stadium, and I was telling Ahmet Ertegun that I am taking her to the Dodgers’ game, and I had box seats—the dugout box, and the security is great. I talked to the public relations office and had her name on the scoreboard: ‘Dodger Stadium Welcomes Bette Midler.’ Ahmet Ertegun warned me, you’ve got to be very careful with Bette. She’s precious cargo. She’s my talent: don’t let her get lost, and be very security conscious.’ I said, ‘Ahmet, I will guard her with my life.’ And I went with her and my wife, Marilyn, and her friend at the time was Peter Riegert. Before we got to the Dodgers game, we were passing Echo Park, right near Dodger Stadium. And, there’s a big fair, called ‘Pan-Pacific Day.’ All the Pacific countries are having some kind of a fest and a feast. Bette says, ‘Stop the car, I’ve got to participate in this. After all, I am from Hawaii, you know.’ She runs out, and—Oh my God! She’s lost in the crowd!—I fucking lost her! I am having visions of Ahmet Ertegun looking for me with a hangman’s noose. Finally, after about 35 minutes, I found her eating some food, talking Samoan, or some kind of Hawaiian talk with some beautiful Asian women. We got her to the stadium, and of course they put her name on the scoreboard,
and she got a big round of applause, and we had a great time. It was a wonderful, wonderful time!” (
77
).

According to Brooks, “I met new friends through her: Bruce Vilanch, and a few other folks along the way. Bette and Carole Bayer Sager and Peter Allen used to come to my home for dinner all the time. It was one of the best times of our lives. I had ‘I Go to Rio’ with Peter Allen, which was a smash across the boards. Around that same time, Carole Bayer Sager had ‘You’re Moving Out Today’ ” (
77
).

On Wednesday, December 7, 1977, NBC-TV broadcast Bette’s special
Ol’ Red Hair Is Back
. Her co-stars were Dustin Hoffman and famed circus clown Emmett Kelly, Jr. The show opened with Bette emerging from her seashell, resurrected from
Clams on the Half-Shell
, complete with the overture from
Oklahoma!
She performed “Hello in There” emotionally to sad-faced clown Kelly and even undressed Hoffman while he played piano. Nick Yanni in the
Soho Weekly News
announced of the special, “Bette is terrific—absolutely spectacular, most engaging and endearing not only to her legions of loyal fans, but probably, after this show, to many new converts” (
79
).

Oddly enough, for the special, Bette used a new group of Harlettes: Sharon Redd teamed with former Harlettes Robin Grean and Merle Miller. Although much of Midler’s material was lifted and restaged from her concert act, considerable expurgation of her in-concert material was required for TV. Example: “We washed, we showered, we FDS’d [feminine deodorant sprayed] ourselves into a stupor” was changed to “We washed, we showered, we gargled ourselves into a stupor.” However, she did manage to get enough zingers into the script, just under the noses of the network censors. Giving an “aside” to the Harlettes, Bette commanded, “Try to remain vertical, girls—at least until the first commercial” (
80
).

According to Gerrit Henry in the
New York Times
, “The 31-year-old Miss Midler has made it to the small screen largely intact. Those who know her stage show or albums are aware that Miss Midler’s act is anything but standard television fare. Her onstage persona, ‘The Divine Miss M,’ is a feverishly schizoid creation—a sex crazed, foul-mouthed hussy with a heart, and eyes of a lost child. . . . Add to this non-stop patter full of acid-tongued put-downs, salty language and sexual innuendo, and you have a performer who generates love-or-hate-her reactions almost of the kind elicited by the late Judy Garland” (
80
).

TV Guide
found Bette a bit restrained yet fully appealing: “There
are some racy moments in the special—costumes—gestures, lyrics, and double entendres—but Bette is actually rather restrained by her own stage standards. No profanity. No nudity. No bumps and grinds. Even her dad ought to be able to watch her perform this time” (
81
). The trashy diva was a TV star now!

When writer Gerrit Henry of the
New York Times
inquired of her future in television, Midler snapped back at him, “A future in TV? Who’d want a future on TV? Television is a medium that eats you alive. You can’t keep turning out good material week after week! Another special maybe” (
80
). If she had only listened to her own advice in the year 2000!

The following year, Bette’s
Ol’ Red Hair Is Back
won an Emmy Award as the Outstanding Variety Special of the season. When the awards were handed out, Bette was on her first European concert tour, so Aaron accepted for her at the awards ceremony. However, he never once thanked Bette in his speech, and she never let him forget it.

The TV special’s broadcast date was in the middle of Bette’s highly publicized nightclub tour, entitled “An Intimate Evening with Bette.” The tour encompassed dates at the Cave in Vancouver, Bimbo’s in San Francisco, the Roxy in Los Angeles, the Park West in Chicago, the Paradise Theater in Boston, and New York City’s famed Copacabana. A truce was finally worked out between the Harlettes, Bette, and Aaron Russo; and Sharon, Ula, and Charlotte were featured as Bette’s opening act. Then Bette would make her entrance, and the Harlettes would remain on stage as her background singers.

According to Aaron at that time, Bette “has turned down offers in excess of $3 million to perform large concerts across the country. She sincerely believes that while stadiums would produce higher income, an intimate atmosphere is more vital in generating electricity between people and the performer” (
82
). Although the tickets to the engagement varied from city to city from $15 to $25 a head, scalpers were reportedly getting up to $100 each for them. (One has to keep in mind that this was 1978, when it was unthinkable that twenty-two years later a face-value ticket to see Midler on New Year’s Eve was $500 a head.)

In New York City, the January 20, 1978, show was nearly canceled due to a huge blizzard that dumped thirteen inches of snow on the city streets. That night when Bette hit the stage, she quipped, “They promised us five inches and gave us thirteen. If life were only like that!” Bette was indeed in fine form. Discussing the fact that she had attended
an EST seminar, she deadpanned, “EST! Oh, please . . . I wouldn’t recommend it. I should have gone to Bloomingdale’s instead!” (
83
).

The unfortunate thing about Bette’s Copacabana engagement was that the club’s owners jammed far too many seats into the once-glamorous basement nightspot. Rex Reed wrote in the
New York Daily News
that “it wasn’t just crowded, it is miserable. . . . The act isn’t just sold out, it’s been oversold. . . . mobs pushed, shoved and groped their way along the narrow stairs in a reckless disregard of the fire regulations” (
84
). In the
Village Voice
, Arthur Bell wrote, “Ron Delsner, Aaron Russo, and whoever else is responsible for overcrowding the Copa during the Bette Midler run should have their asses kicked. They’ve done a disservice to their talent and to the establishment. The Second Coming couldn’t get me inside the Copa again” (
78
).

In addition to the admission charge, the Copacabana also imposed a two-drink minimum. Laughing, Midler said to her audience, “You fools, they bought Manhattan for less money than it cost you to see me!” (
83
). Nevertheless, it was worth every cent, and the reviews were glowing.

According to Rex Reed, “Finally, the star herself emerged. Her hair, blonder than its usual maraschino color, looked like 40 rats had spent the winter in it. Her spangled shirt looked like a sofa cover from Sister Ione’s tarot card parlor and mung bean salad bar. Beneath, she wore black toreador pants with a lace garter around the knee and yelled fearlessly to the roaring mob: ‘I stand before you, nipples to the wind!’ She was pure dynamite” (
84
).

As 1978 began, Bette Midler had already conquered the record charts, the Broadway stage, the television screen, nightclubs, and concert halls. There was just one more obstacle in her push to become a total superstar: movies. That was the final medium that Bette had to master before Aaron Russo would have made good on his promise to make Midler into a “legend.”

After the last shows at the Copacabana in January of 1978, Harlettes Redd, Hedwig, and Crossley officially struck out on their own, never again to work as a trio behind Bette. They had all made it clear that they
very strongly
disliked Russo, during this era, Ula publicly proclaimed, “Aaron’s not one of my favorite people. I wish Bette would break up with him. I think he’s making her untouchable. Whenever he wasn’t around, we actually had a good time together. We hung out together—we bowled and we’d stay at the same hotel. But whenever he was there, she’d be whisked away to some—you know—the best hotel
in town and we’d never see her. He’d never let anybody get close to her. He just sort of scares away her friends” (
48
).

According to Charlotte Crossley, Russo did things just to anger Midler. One of his famous stunts involved not bathing for several days at a time. An article that was printed in
New West
magazine in 1978 described Aaron as “so insignificant and classless and altogether sloblike. The moon-pie Jewish face framed by greasy ringlets, the Cookie Monster belly, the grungy gray sweatshirt that hikes up the rear to show suet and hair decorating his backbone” (
67
).

While Bette was in San Francisco on her nightclub tour, Aaron had a huge run-in with concert promoter Bill Graham. The next week in Los Angeles, Russo showed up for the dates at the Roxy packing a pistol and surrounded by several burly and intimidating bodyguards.

Although disliked by the people around Bette, Russo made an important move at exactly the right time. Bette Midler was going to make her long-awaited movie debut, and the cameras were about to roll that spring. So begins the final episode of “Bette and Aaron” and the start of Midler’s career as a movie star.

Bette Midler was destined to become a film actress. It was predicted for her early in her career, but it took several years to finally get her to the screen. Aaron Russo’s decision not to allow Bette to appear in several film projects that came her way was a strategic move to his credit.

It was reported that Bette’s major film debut could have been in any one of a dozen different films. Among the roles that Midler and Russo passed on were Stockard Channing’s role in
The Fortune
(1975); Barbara Harris’s in Robert Altman’s
Nashville
(1975); Talia Shire’s in
Rocky;
Madeline Kahn’s in
Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood
(1976); Jessica Lange’s in
King Kong;
and Goldie Hawn’s role in
Foul Play
(1978). Film versions of the lives of vaudeville star Sophie Tucker, scandalous author Dorothy Parker, Broadway legend Ethel Merman, and the bawdy Texas Guinan were also discussed as screen vehicles for Midler. There was, however, a biography that kept surfacing, entitled
The Pearl
, based on the life of tragic rocker Janis Joplin. It was this script that eventually evolved into
The Rose
(1979).

The script for
The Pearl
was written by Bill Kerby, and it was commissioned by one of the producers at 20th Century-Fox, Marvin Worth. It was one of the initial projects that was offered to Bette when she first became the toast of the entertainment business in 1973. Worth wanted Bette to play Janis Joplin.

“It was first sent to me,” recalls Midler, “not long after Janis passed away. I thought it was in very bad taste to send the script to anyone. It
was like dancing on someone’s grave before the body was cold. To be blunt, I didn’t like it very much. By ’75 or ’76 we [Bette and Aaron] were at Columbia, trying to tailor-make a screenplay and having very little luck, mostly because the writers were unfamiliar with my work, or I didn’t communicate with them. This script kept coming back like clockwork. Eventually, I sat down and reread it, and it wasn’t bad. It’s not exactly the strongest plot in the whole world, but for a performer like me, it had a big emotional range, and I was interested in range” (
85
).