People, Apr. 17, 1978

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"I have never met a dumber broad," complains Bette Midler. Who could it be? Why, the Divine Miss M happens to be describing the Divine Miss M. The occasion: an interview with herself for the tenth-anniversary issue of After Dark magazine. She also appears on the cover, kicking up her heels above a sea of balloons. Soon she will be kicking off her first movie, which, she promises, is "nothing with flying saucers. Nothing with sharks." The Rose is the story of a flamboyant, 1960s blues singer. "It's not about Janis Joplin. It's about a blues singer who wins—beats life at its own game," insists Bette. Her co-star is Alan Bates, who plays her manager. "I've never met Miss Midler," he said after signing for the part. Both hope their work together will not put anyone in mind of Bette's last nightclub act: "Close Encounters of the Worst Kind."

She struggled with the Soviet secret police when they broke into her Moscow apartment to arrest her husband, Alexander, and now, at a distance, Natalya Solzhenitsyn is struggling with them again. This time she is speaking out for the Solzhenitsyns' longtime friend Alexander Ginzburg, 41. Ginzburg, until his arrest 14 months ago, was the administrator in the U.S.S.R. of the $1.7 million Russian Social Fund, established and financed by Solzhenitsyn. Before he was sent to Kaluga prison for alleged anti-Soviet activities, Ginzburg managed to distribute $360,000 to the "wives, children and parents of political prisoners of conscience who need support," says Natalya. To help draw attention to his plight, the Solzhenitsyns set up a Ginzburg Defense Committee in the U.S., composed of artists, journalists and politicians. Last week Natalya left the secluded Solzhenitsyn estate near Cavendish, Vt., and flew to London to launch the committee abroad. Said she: "The case of Alexander Ginzburg should draw the attention of all people, irrespective of their political views."

Christiaan Barnard will soon have to put down his scalpel because of arthritis in his hands, but he is just warming up as a writer. The co-author of a couple of novels with medical themes, the South African heart surgeon last week began a weekly column for Johannesburg's Rand Daily Mail. Although he is consigned to the women's pages, Barnard, 55, addressed himself to men. Where, he wonders, do men stand "now that the stronger sex has escaped from the boudoir and the kitchen?" Says he: "The dainty little thing who sets your pulse racing as she trips along the street ahead of you or displays herself curvily on a beach is nature's chosen sex. She is a much more physiologically efficient arrangement than your hairy, paunchy frame." And to make matters worse, warned Barnard, artificial insemination and women's improved breadwinning ability could make the male obsolete in some sci-fi future. As the doctor sees it, "A few of us may be kept in benign captivity for education and other purposes, but don't count on it."