Bette Midler (29 page)

Every rose has its thorns—and Bette’s life and career have had quite a few. Between 1980 and 1982, several things went wrong. She was sued by the Harlettes. She made a financially disastrous concert film called
Divine Madness
. She starred in one of the most tragic comedy films ever made, entitled
Jinxed
. And she had a nervous breakdown. The real problem with achieving great heights of success is the distance one has to fall when things turn sour.

The one question on everyone’s mind was whether Bette Midler could effectively manage her own career? She had one enormous hit under her belt, and she had fired Aaron. Now the ball was in her court and she was calling all the shots.

Since she now had a smash film and a soon-to-be hit album in the stores, it seemed like an obvious move to do what she did best—go out on tour. From December 1979 to January 1980, her latest stage incarnation—
Bette! Divine Madness
—ran as a huge success on Broadway. It gave her the platform not only to utilize the material that made her famous, but to incorporate some of the hard-edged rock & roll that she had put in her film portrayal of the Rose—notably, the songs “Stay with Me” and “The Rose.”

On the closing night of the show’s run, Aaron showed up backstage to tell Bette what a mess she was making of her career without him. “I was, of course, at my worst, my lowest ebb. Aaron always had a real
nose for knowing when I was feeling terrible about myself and my life,” she remembered (
8
).

Bette had made the decision that her next movie would be a time-capsule film of her present stage act. She decided that she wanted to capture on film her wild stage persona and improve on her 1976 HBO special, with better camera angles, more elaborate costumes—showing off her newly svelte figure—and better acoustics. The film was to be called
Divine Madness
, and she was paid $850,000 for starring in it.

It was later alleged that for the run of the Broadway show, Bette had promised the present set of Harlettes—Frannie Eisenberg, Paulette McWilliams, and Linda Hart—that if they completed the run in New York City, they would be taken to Los Angeles to appear in
Divine Madness
and would be paid $14,500 apiece per week for their performances. The day after
Bette! Divine Madness
closed on Broadway, each of the three girls was informed—by telegram—that she was fired and that her services would not be needed for the film. That same week, Bette ended her relationship with Peter Riegert.

Harlettes Eisenberg, McWilliams, and Hart were not amused and they entered into a joint breach-of-contract suit against Bette Midler and the film’s producer, the Ladd Company. The suit asked for $3 million and was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in Santa Monica on January 31, 1980. The suit was ultimately dismissed, and filming began with three different Harlettes: Jocelyn Brown, Diva Gray, and Ula Hedwig. Hedwig was available, as Formerly of the Harlettes had disbanded.

Although the movie was shot in only four days, in four separate concerts at the Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, California, it was fraught with problems. To begin with, Bette was battling pneumonia, and, with the exception of Ula, she was working with all new people. She had even fired her band and hired new musicians, so the production had the distinct feeling of a dress rehearsal.

For four nights, from February 13 to 16, 1980, ten separate camera crews shot more than a million and a half feet of film. According to the movie’s cinematographer, William Franker, “The normal time to reload a camera is ten minutes. We kept practicing until we got it down to two minutes flat. I felt as if I was heading a pit crew at the Indianapolis 500!” (
8
).

In a very real sense, the whole project was one mad race with time. Much of the music had to be rerecorded, but the film was edited,
printed, and playing in theaters by September 1980. It premiered in Los Angeles on the 17th of that month.

As a movie,
Divine Madness
is a highly entertaining concert film and brilliant historical look at Bette’s onstage bombastic display of kinetic musical energy. For the opening, “Big Noise from Winnetka,” the Harlettes are dressed in high white chefs’ hats, and Bette is carried on stage atop a plate with giant carrots and an ear of corn—as the main course of “fowl.” Standing upright on a blanket of faux-edible greenery, Midler reveals that she is the Thanksgiving turkey, complete with tail-feathers. She carries a purse made of a plucked rubber chicken, as she announces, “Welcome to another fowl evening with the Divine Miss M, in another feeble-minded attempt to turn chicken shit into chicken salad. . . . Make no mistake—eggs will be laid tonight.”

The cinematography is consistently good, with most of the screen time devoted to Midler close-ups—but with enough wide shots and widescreen views of the Harlettes. Bette is newly blonde and beautifully svelte.

As it was meant to be,
Divine Madness
is a fitting time capsule of what Bette was like here onstage during the most fascinating decade of her career—the one in which she truly blossomed as a star in full roselike bloom.

It is still the wild and off-color Bette, with a slick production number-filled theatrical revue of a show. However, unlike most musical revues, this show isn’t composed of several performers; instead, it’s one singular sensation of a star—but she is many performers rolled into one body. She is the rock diva, the pantomime artist, the bawdy stand-up comedian, the Broadway-style star, and—thanks to
The Rose
—she is now also a movie star come to life.

When an audience member shouts out something about her now-famous breasts, Bette rips open the front of her Velcro-affixed dress to reveal her elaborate brassiere underneath.

As mermaid tail–clad Dolores DeLago, she sings a dainty ditty called, “All He Wanted Was to Eat Me.” And, mid-number, she fondles two large coconuts on the phallic palm tree that is attached to her wheelchair.

Still in the electronic wheelchair and the fish fin, Bette continues to mine the Frank Sinatra song catalog, by singing “My Way,” her way. It is done with goofy tongue-in-cheek flair.

But, ultimately, it is her sincere singing and her inexhaustible energy
that make her act, and this film, artistically successful. One of the most touching sequences features Bette singing a poignant version of her newly recorded hit ballad “The Rose.” Her rendition of “The Rose” is mesmerizing.

“Chapel of Love” comes to life with an elaborate costume that Bette wears, with a groom on one side and the bride—Midler—on the reverse. The Harlettes are dressed as bouquet-bearing bridesmaids. When the number comes to an end, the girls strip away their wedding drag to reveal slips, while Bette peels her costume off to show her in a 1940s-style one-piece bathing suit. Across her chest is a beauty contestant’s sash, which in this case reads: “Miss Community Chest.”

She does it all in
Divine Madness:
from vaudeville (her Sophie Tucker jokes) to mime (on “Ready to Begin Again.”) As the character she once called “Nanette,” Bette’s forlorn bag woman is used to give “Do You Want to Dance?” a bittersweet setting, making the question in the song the request of a desperately lonely woman.

Bette does her tough-girl rock & roll set against a Manhattan backdrop. She covers Bruce Springsteen’s “E Street Shuffle” and her own now-famous “Leader of the Pack,” which ends up with Midler flat on her back on the stage floor, having sex with an imagined lover.

As the concert’s grand finale, Midler continues rocking, using Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” to end the proceedings on a feverish high pitch. Bette ends up on the stage floor in exhaustion, while the crowd cheers for the divine dose of madness they have just witnessed.

From a marketing standpoint, it would seem that everyone who flocked to the concert series would love to go out and see the filmed version. However, this was not what happened. Perhaps it was a case of “been there, done that.” Whatever the reason, this film was “in” and “out” of movie theaters in rapid succession.

The critical response was positive. The
New York Daily News
proclaimed,
“Divine Madness
is a Grade A achievement . . . captures the essential Midler.”
The New York Times
said,
“Divine Madness
presents Miss Midler’s act in all its gaudy, irrepressible glory.” And the
Los Angeles Times
called it “a winner” (
8
). Unfortunately, it was a big disappointment at the box office, and it seemed to come and go very quickly in theaters. The song “My Mother’s Eyes” was released as a single, and the soundtrack album of
Divine Madness
made it up to Number 34 on the
Billboard
charts.

In many ways the
Divine Madness
album was much more of a strong
live rock concert album than
Live at Last
had been. The comedy bits and all of the monologues that took up much of
Live at Last
were left off this single disc. That is not to say that, musically, one is better than the other; it’s just that
Live at Last
plays more like a Broadway show soundtrack, while
Divine Madness
is a much more fast-paced and entertaining rock & roll concert disc. Some of the songs unique to this LP are Bette’s rocking versions of Bruce Springsteen’s “E Street Shuffle,” Bob Seger’s “Fire Down Below,” and the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” It is fascinating to note that although the Harlettes are seen and heard cavorting on stage with Bette and singing background vocals, they are joined by an off-stage voice. Luther Vandross, who was still just a background singer and a songwriter at this point, is heard singing on this album—in the background. He had sung background on most of the songs on her
Thighs and Whispers
album. He was brought in to give the Harlettes—and Bette—a fuller sound. In this way, Luther—who became a recording star on his own in the 1980s—was Bette’s first and only male Harlette.

As a concert film and in creative terms,
Divine Madness
is great. Bette worked her ass off—as she always does in concert. She looks great. She sounds great. The camera work is wonderfully varied, zooming in closely at the appropriate times, yet there are enough wide shots to give the viewer the scope of the onstage action. However, in its theatrical release, it was a box-office “bust.”

One of the most striking omissions was the song “Friends.” The reason for its exclusion from the album and the film was that Bette got into an argument with Moogy Klingman over the publishing rights to the song. According to him, “She was going to use ‘Friends’ in a film, in her concert film,
Divine Madness
. And, we were negotiating for a week on the fee she was going to pay for the publishing on the song at that time, and she didn’t put it in her film” (
36
).

Divine Madness
is also subject to some of the oddest editing and marketing decisions for an album, a movie, and now, in the twenty-first century—a DVD. The film contains songs that are not on the album. The album contains a song—and a hit single—that is not in the movie. And the 1999 DVD release dropped two of the songs that appeared in the original film. “Shiver Me Timbers” appears on the soundtrack album and the film, but was edited from the DVD. “The Rose,” “My Way,” and “Ready to Begin Again” appear in the film and on the DVD, but are not on the soundtrack album. And “My Mother’s Eyes” is on
the album, but is not in the film—or the DVD. Why would a single be released from a soundtrack album if it doesn’t appear in the film? And why would a DVD—in an era of “extra features”—drop not only “Shiver Me Timbers” but a piece called “Rainbow Sleeve” and the obviously filmed “My Mother’s Eyes”? Who knows? Perhaps one of these days the complete and unedited version of
Divine Madness
will be restored and released. The film was intended as the ultimate Midler-in-concert time capsule, but the full version has yet to be seen.

Miss M obviously had other things on her mind when some of these decisions were being made. She was whirling like a dervish with activities—especially since she was now making all of her own business decisions. The next thing on her plate was her emergence into still another arena of the entertainment world—as now she was an author.

In April 1980, Bette Midler’s first book, the semiautobiographical
A View from a Broad
, was published, Bette wrote the first draft during her first global concert tour in 1978. In it, she refers to Aaron Russo only as “my manager.” In fact, his name does not appear anywhere. The book is a compilation of tour adventures like being Krazy-Glued into the hotdog outfit and making fun of Hitler in Germany. There are also segments about Dolores DeLago and the Magic Lady—who was an outgrowth of her Nanette character. Color photos and scrapbook-like layouts added to the whimsy of the book, and it became a best-seller.

“It’s jaunty. Some of it is absolutely real, and some of it is totally off-the-wall, but that’s the way my life is, you know? It’s up to the reader to tread this sodden, marshy fen and come up with some kind of conclusion, if he’s interested, about my life,” Bette joked (
8
).