Bette Midler Steals Hollywood

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Bette's pianist and arranger was young Barry Manilow, just a few years short of his own, more comfortable stardom. Their first rehearsals were "nothing special, almost dull," as Manilow recalls them. "I played and she sang. But then we did it in front of an audience. She came downstairs in this turban and an outfit that could have come from my grandmother's closet. She was a tornado of energy and talent. I was six feet away, and this vision was one of the thunderbolts in my life." Another fan-Aaron Russo, signed on as Midler's manager in 1971, while she was still at the Baths, and they briefly were lovers. Their eight-year affiliation was productive and destructive; they were two strong wills making success possible and life miserable. "Aaron began booking me into theaters," Bette says, "and lo and behold, I was a big success. For our first full revue, we had our backup trio, the Harlettes, and a great band and girls in tap-dancing clothes and the jukebox and the mannequins and King Kong. It just blew me away!" Bette was a Broadway star.

But Russo dreamed bigger still. "From the beginning," he says now, "I knew the screen could take this little person with the enormous talent and show her off in a big way." But no project seemed right. So they resurrected Pearl, a script about Janis Joplin, and had it rewritten, Midler says, "as a homage to all those men and women who bit the dust from sheer compulsion." That was The Rose. "I had a ball! I couldn't wait each day to strap on that angst bag and chew up that scenery. I thought it was my best work." Seen today, The Rose looks ragged, with dramatic longueurs randomly interspersed with explosions, but that is part of its surly authenticity. And Midler, deglamourized as Joplin and vulnerable as her own private self, creates a gorgeous image of tenacious stardom as the dying Rose waves away the hands guiding her and, revived by the audience's electricity, propels herself onstage for her last performance.

A European tour following the filming of The Rose in 1979 provoked one last fight with Russo, and Midler was on her own. She chose a jokey film noir script called Jinxed; she chose the director Don Siegel and her co-star Ken Wahl. The brass at United Artists, then tiptoeing through the rubble of Heaven's Gate, was turning to Midler to make decisions. And the creative team, vexed at her power, turned on her. There were shoving matches and walkouts. It was a sorry time. In retrospect, Midler notes, "I feel I've had my revenge. What goes around comes around." Translation: Siegel's and Wahl's careers have treadmilled, while Bette's has escalated. But Hollywood seemed not to know what to do with its unconventional star. Says Rose Director Mark Rydell: "She didn't fail us. The film business failed her."

Bette, better, best -- bested. Jinxed defeated her; De Tour exhausted her. "Bette is easily bruised," says Tour Director Jerry Blatt. "She couples incredible toughness with great softness. You feel she could creak, crumble at any minute." And busted: something like a nervous breakdown ensued. "I couldn't face the world," she recalls. "I slept all day and cried all night. I was drinking to excess. I was miserable." Then, as if in a Hollywood musical (not The Rose), love found Bette Midler. "When I was at my lowest point," Bette says, "Harry called me up out of the blue. This was October of 1984, and in two months we were married" (see box).