Bette Midler Steals Hollywood

The lady knows how to make an entrance. On New Year's Eve, 1972, she was borne onstage at Manhattan's Lincoln Center in a sedan chair with the drapes closed, one leg peeking through to salute the audience; at midnight she returned in a diaper as Baby 1973. She has emerged from a giant mollusk in a Polynesian bikini; walked on in a cunning knee-length frankfurter costume, mustard streaked down her front; raced across the proscenium in a mermaid's spangled fin and a motorized wheelchair; wowed crowds with her renowned mammary-balloon ballet. So what can she do for a 1987 encore? Strut into her hit movie, Outrageous Fortune, abuse a defenseless pay phone and insist, "Gimme back my bleepin' quarta!" Hollywood may be far from Broadway, but for Bette Midler it's just another opening, another show.

She has always put on a great show, but until recently it has been mostly onstage, not onscreen. At the dawn of her solo career 15 years ago, Bette (rhymes with pet, sweat, coquette and martinet but never regret) declared her intention to become a "legend." She made good on the boast with a song- and-comedy act that elicited raucous laughs and heaving sobs on both sides of the footlights. She was the Callas of Camp, peppering her program with naughty jokes in the spirit of Mae West and Sophie Tucker. Midler's good-timey raunch made her famous as the Divine Miss M, a creature she once described as embodying "everything you were afraid your little girl would grow up to be -- and your little boy." The image obscured her rightful claim as the most dynamic and poignant singer-actress of her time: a 5-ft. 1-in. Statue of Libido carrying a torch with a blue flame. Her phrasings were as witty as Streisand's, her dredgings of a tormented soul as profound as Aretha's, her range wider than all comers'.

Adulation and awards were never a problem. She copped a Grammy as Best New Artist in 1973. Her 1979 LP, The Rose, went platinum. In 1983 she even found a perch on the best-seller lists with her children's book The Saga of Baby Divine. But what, these days, becomes a legend most? The one little item that eluded Bette Midler: movie stardom. Her galvanizing turn in The Rose, as a soulful thrush on the high wire of drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll, earned the actress raves and an Oscar nomination and . . . precisely no film offers. Her next star role, in the black-and-blue comedy Jinxed (1982), provided the occasion for scuffles, snarky reviews and, for Midler, a nervous breakdown. Jinxed, indeed. It was three years before she made another film.

That was when a performer considered damaged goods teamed up with a studio aching for mainstream success: Bette Midler made three comedies for Walt Disney Studios. Zinnng! A sprinkle of stardust, and here comes the happy ending, one as unlikely as the transformation of a white elephant into a soaring Dumbo. Her first, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, was tenth among 1986's box-office winners; the next, Ruthless People, ranked eighth; Outrageous Fortune has earned more than $25 million in the first 25 days of release. The cheeky trio made Disney a major movie studio and Midler Hollywood's top female attraction. Rhapsodizes Jeffrey Katzenberg, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, who recently signed her to a three-picture production deal: "Bette Midler is the single greatest asset as a performer we have." Asset? You Bette! You're the company's hottest female star since Minnie Mouse.