Bette Midler (34 page)

Elton John, Cher, Flip Wilson, and Bette were the stars of the visually spectacular
Cher
TV special in 1976. Dressed by Bob Mackie, Bette got her first taste of Hollywood glamour on this show.
(Courtesy of CBS-TV / MJB Photo Archives)

In September 1984, Bette and Dan Aykroyd hosted the First Annual MTV Awards show, broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall. Bette was in rare form that night, and as she said, “It’s been great exposure for me.” At the end of the show she wore a black-and-white striped gown with a floral brassiere on top of it. For the second half of the show she wore what looked like an orange prom gown that billowed out at the waist and had huge shoulder pads. Instead of several costume changes, she simply changed her hats. Her
chapeaus
included a 1940s mesh hair net, a bow of black gauze, a sequined black mantilla covered with glittering rose blossoms, a metallic-orange turban, and even an electronic contraption in black and white that spun around like the blades of a feathered helicopter. Describing this last hat, she announced, “This is what is called a special effect. I have named it ‘Turd Curls from Outer Space!’ ”

At the beginning of the show Bette referred to the telecast as “This Night of at Least Half-a-Dozen Stars.” She then proceeded to add her own commentary on the guest stars whom she introduced to present awards. After announcing ZZ Top, she added, “Nobody knows what lives beneath those beards or lurks behind those sunglasses.”

The funniest moment came after Madonna had just finished gyrating on stage, while singing “Like a Virgin.” Said Bette, “Now that the burning question of Madonna’s virginity has been answered, we are free to go on to even more GAPING questions, such as: How a video is made. We KNOW Madonna’s story!”

Bette’s “Beast of Burden” video was nominated for awards in several categories, including “Best Female Video,” “Best Choreography,” and “Best Stage Performance.” Unfortunately, she failed to take a prize home with her that night. “I thought this was the ‘Miss MTV Awards!’ ” she quipped.

Although she had sworn up and down that she would “NEVER, EVER” get married, in October of 1984 Bette ran into someone she had met a few years earlier, and she immediately fell in love. According to her, they met “years ago. We went out with a party of people to a show—King
Crimson or something. We didn’t get a chance to talk very much” (
18
).

“Harry Kipper, that’s his stage name,” continued Bette. “Most of his friends call him Kipper. He actually sells commodities under the name of Harry Kipper as well. And he performs with Brian Kipper, which is not his real name either. I had met some performance artists, and I wanted to meet others. And a girlfriend of mine, Toni Basil, introduced me to him as one of the Kipper Kids. I always remembered him as that. I thought it was his real name. I ran into him a couple of years later, and he reminded me we had met and I put his name in my book. Two years later, he called me out of the clear blue. After two months of INTENSIVE dating, we were married” (
18
).

Much to the surprise of everyone, including Bette herself, on December 16, 1984, she became Mrs. Martin von Haselberg (a.k.a. Harry Kipper). In true Miss M tradition, Bette and her betrothed were wed in ever-tasteful Las Vegas . . . by an Elvis Presley impersonator!

“The Elvis impersonator was an accident. We wanted to get married quickly, and Vegas sounded like a good place to do it. We didn’t know he was an Elvis impersonator till the end of the ceremony, when he handed us his single. It was the Chapel of the Twilight or something. We had fun. We got all dressed up. I had my dress that I wore to the premiere of
The River
. And Harry had two used-car-salesman suits. The first one was a hounds-tooth check suit that he’d made a couple of years ago. He looked like something out of
The Music Man
. I said, ‘no, Harry, I really can’t marry you in that suit.’ So he changed into a nice black suit. The long drive to Vegas had been a lot of laughs. But the long drive back from Vegas was kind of quiet. We were fairly shaken. We went there on a lark, but it now was going to be real” (
18
).

Kipper, who had been married and divorced once before, is three years younger than Bette. “For the first couple of weeks after we got married, it was, ‘Uh-oh, what did we do?’ There were some rough spots, but we did our talking, we did our compromising. Fortunately, we liked what we got to know,” she remembers (
100
).

Harry, who was educated in England, had actually been born of German parents in Buenos Aries, Argentina. Bette said that she was a little surprised that she ended up married to a German. “I married a Kraut. Every night I get dressed up as Poland and he invades me,” she quips (
100
).

On January 28, 1985, Bette Midler was one of the many record industry superstars to come together at A&M Recording Studios in Los Angeles to record the Number 1 mega-hit song “We Are the World.” The funds that the song raised were to assist relief efforts in famine-plagued Africa, and especially the people in Ethiopia. “We Are the World” was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, and produced by Quincy Jones. They were able to get the participation of a virtual “Who’s Who” of the current recording world, primarily because it was recorded the night of the annual American Music Awards telecast. It was kind of like those old Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney movies, where someone would announce, “I’ve got a barn—let’s put on a show.” Somehow, it seemed, everyone—including Bette—wanted to be involved. In alphabetical order, the cast of singers included Dan Aykroyd, Harry Belafonte, Lindsey Buckingham, Kim Carnes, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Sheila E., Bob Geldof, Daryl Hall, James Ingram, Jackie Jackson, La-Toya Jackson, Marlon Jackson, Michael Jackson, Randy Jackson, Tito Jackson, Al Jarreau, Billy Joel, Cyndi Lauper, Huey Lewis & the News, Kenny Loggins, Bette Midler, Willie Nelson, John Oates, Jeffrey Osborne, Steve Perry, the Pointer Sisters, Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Dionne Warwick, and Stevie Wonder. The record received much airplay and raised millions of dollars. However, so much was made about the song, and what a wonderful humanitarian effort it represented, that “We Are the World” soon became the butt of several jokes.

The funniest jokes came from none other than Bette Midler herself. Although most of the people sang a solo vocal on the record, she was among the vocalists who were heard only in the chorus. She referred to the song as “We Are the Rich, We Are the Famous.” She recalls with sarcasm, “It was a fantastic night. I stood next LaToya. She was wearing a headband. I felt naked. Bruce Springsteen was there. He was chatting with the soloists. I ran up to him. I said, ‘Bruce, you look fabulous! What happened?’ ” (
7
).

On April 30 and May 1, 1985, Bette recorded her tenth album, before a live audience at Bud Friedman’s Improvisation comedy club in Los Angeles. It was something entirely new for Midler, a comedy album called
Mud Will Be Flung Tonight!
A completely different concept for Bette: an evening without mermaid outfits, without wheelchairs, without Harlettes, and without costume changes. The result, which was released
late in the year, presented two sides of Bette Midler: the stand-up comedian and the singing satirist.

The album is very funny and contains several of her zanier bits of comedy and a couple of ribald songs. The highlights include a song about her weight, entitled “Fat As I Am”; the tale of Otto Titsling—inventor of the bra; her Sophie Tucker jokes; and a running commentary on life called “Why Bother?” A sticker on the original vinyl LP warned record buyers, “Contains material that may be deemed offensive by Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and Prince.”

“I haven’t had much luck with music,” Bette gave as her reason for recording a comedy album. “I wasn’t camp for a long time, and I really miss it. Life is a drag and people need to be ticked by someone as twitty as my own self.” She was especially pleased with the idea of poking fun at herself. “What I’ve got a really good take on is tits. Because I’ve had mine for so long, and they’re such a big part of me. I weigh more now than I’ve ever weighed, more than I could ever conceived of someone my size weighing. But you know what? I was zooming toward forty [years old], and I suddenly realized I didn’t care anymore how I looked. It’s a great weight off my mind” (
103
).

Mud Will Be Flung Tonight
received favorable reviews. Unfortunately, it failed to find an audience, and it sold fewer copies than any Bette Midler album before it. In less than a year, it was already in the discount bins at record stores.

As 1985 ended, Bette Midler found herself a happily married forty-year-old woman, whose career was desperately floundering and who was in need of a hit. She was about to get the reward that she had been waiting for, and she could sense her forthcoming glory. “I really feel like what’s coming up,” she said prophetically, “is going to be better than anything I’ve ever done” (
103
).

It was just two months after she married Harry that something surprising and wonderful happened to Bette. Just when she thought that she might never make another movie again in her career, and that she had been totally blackballed in the industry by
Jinxed
, she was offered a role in a film that would revitalize her career completely.
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
was the life raft that rescued the drowning diva.

The film was the brainchild of director Paul Mazursky, whose illustrious track record includes
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
(1969) and
Moscow on the Hudson
(1984). Paul had long recalled a French film that he saw in the 1950s at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City called
Boudu Saved from Drowning (Boudu Sauvé des Eaus)
. The 1932 film by Jean Renoir was based on an original play by Rene Rauchois and was about a well-to-do Parisian gentleman who saved a homeless bum from suicide and then ended up being responsible for him and his well-being.

“I’d seen
Boudu Saved from Drowning
in the early fifties,” recalls Mazursky. “I had a vague memory of a vagabond who jumps into the Seine and of a bourgeois bookseller who saves him and brings him into his house. That’s when the trouble begins. Years later, in the late seventies, I started thinking about the film again. I mentioned to [screenplay writer] Leon [Caperanos]—who like me is a great fan of Jean Renoir’s, that it might be interesting to switch
Boudu
to the United States. We decided to poke fun at Beverly Hills—to make fun of my own life, so to speak. Of course, we had to invent a new family and update the notion
of the romantic vagabond, which in today’s society just doesn’t ring true. As we wrote, we aimed for something completely new and contemporary” (
8
).

The script that Paul and Leon came up with transferred the original story concept to 1980s Beverly Hills. Their characters are a homeless street person, Jerry Baskin, who tries to drown himself in the swimming pool of a nouveau-riche couple, Dave and Barbara Whiteman. Dave made his fortune in the wire coat-hanger business, and his wife is a spoiled Rodeo Drive matron who lives a world of gurus, psychoanalysts, aerobics, flawless manicures, and hours and hours of nonstop shopping.