Bette Midler in "The Rose"
Broken Blossom's or a sweet hit?
John C. Mahoney


"Sex! Drugs! Rock-and-roll!"
"Sex! Drugs! Rock-and-roll!"
"Sex! Drugs! Rock-and-roll!" 

We grew hoarse from the chanting, standing on plush theater seats, mock frenzy soon giving way to the real thing. 

It was summer of '78, though the exhorters of 20th Century-Fox were there to remind us that the year was 1969. The original invitation to this historic though mythic movie concert had promised us 1966, and earlier a Fox publicist had reckoned the year at 1963. The heavy odor of mothballs on fringed leather jackets and velvet Goodwill gowns mingled with the pungent passage of fresh pot and poppers. Tarnished love beads and matted feathers decorated the audience of extras. 

It was the Wiltern Theater, one of those Byzantine Hollywood picture palaces of the Golden Era, now fallen on hard times, and soon after this event to convert to a policy of Mexican film imports. The Joshua Light Show screen at the rear of the stage belched a liquid rainbow of psychedelic dreams. At its nucleus, the outline of a single abstracted rose quivered under the bass beat vibration of two banks of speakers rising eight feet at either side of the stage. We were ready. She made her entrance, bottle of booze in hand. 

Young men ripped off their shirts, waving them in rhythm to the chant, sweating, deafened by the assault of electric blues. "Sex! Drugs! Rock-and-roll!" The first four rows of paid extras freaked out, a wave of snaking arms lashed toward the stage, throwing their roses at the altar of the legend. "Rose! Rose! Rose! Rose!" 

It might have been Janis Joplin. But, no, it could as readily have been Hendrix or Morrison. It was, of course, Bette Midler. Months of liquid protein dieting had wasted all but the full breasts of the Divine Miss M. Her arms were mantis thin, her face hollowed to a desperate, haunted beauty. She was defying us to love her. We were begging to love her. She was the Rose, a nickname for the Joplin-like character she plays in the film of the same name. And we were there, in a day that never was. In 1969, the year of the Rose in fact, the last tragic eight days of the Rose, all of the fast-lane legends of the '60s in one package, fired by the truth of an extraordinary performance. 

Seven cameras rolled. Seven cameras stopped. Assistants collected the roses, replaced those crushed beneath Midler's antic feet. It was sweltering. The director, Mark Rydell, was explaining that the cameras on the towers had gotten too hot and there would be a short delay. Comic Jay Leno, hired for the night to keep the audience loose during the lengthy setups and delays, was running out of coke and Quaalude jokes and started making inside gags about his manager, Ron DeBlasio, for sticking him with this gig. 

Later on, Rydell introduced the cinematographers and Midler's manager - and the film's producer - Aaron Russo, who cut a ridiculous figure in khaki short pants and dimpled knees. What one notices first are the elbows and the gut of a man who likes his moments at the center stage, the sort of pushy and abrasive fellow you'd not want to deal with, but the sort of a brawler you would want fighting and shoving in your behalf if you, like Midler, were the talent. Russo introduced co-producer Marvin Worth, who was reluctantly forced to join Russo on stage. 

The project had been Worth's baby for six years. From the start, it was planned with Midler in mind, first as a low budget project at Columbia, later big budget at 20th Century-Fox. He optioned Janis Joplin's music in anticipation for a true film biography. No response from Midler or Russo. He commissioned screenplays. Midler turned them down. Only when the script was made into a story about a prototypical tragic rock star of the '60s did Russo and Midler accept the film. It suddenly became a Marvin Worth / Aaron Russo production. More Russo than Worth. 

Behind the wall of speakers, Midler was having a heated argument with Rydell, her energies appearing to be flagging already. He soothed her and would later say in praise of her that unlike Rose, shy Bette doesn't smoke, drink, or swear. Only a lip reader could be sure, but we doubt he is right on all three counts. 

A Fox representative paced the aisles in panic. "She's losing them. The audience, Christ, she's lost them already!" He was wrong. Moments later, the cameras rolled, the band, made up of the cream of Hollywood rock and studio musicians, revved up and she was on the stage, drenched in roses, wearing green velvet and a sequined dusty rose blouse over a rose-tattooed T-shirt and singing "When a Man Loves a Woman." When the cameras stopped, she sang "Stagger Lee" through the break, then "Spanish Harlem," and finally, "Stay With Me, Baby." 

In the Rose character, she was loud, vulgar, obscene, in pain, and magnificent, pushing herself to the brink, whipping the audience to a frenzy in a performance that transcended both the impression of Janis Joplin and all memory of Midler. It was a new character. "They thought I'd do a comedy first. I'll give them the unexpected," she said, and she'd stretched herself beyond all expectation. She finished the film that summer. Now, $9 million and more than a year later, the film Fox believed in enough to hold for the year-end Academy Award-qualifying is ready. Bette Midler's stock appears poised to jump five points on the Richter Scale of superstardom. A great deal has changed. 

In the early '70s, one of the songs she performed at the Continental Baths was the old Busby Berkeley-Warner Bros. Production number "Remember My Forgotten Man." These days it's applicable to Aaron Russo, whom she dropped as her manager some months ago. Though still listed as co-producer of the film, he is not invited to take part in many of the studio meetings on the film's release. Marvin Worth has prevailed.  Russo is trying to revitalize the career of Sally Kellerman now. 

Once involved romantically as well as professionally, Russo and Midler have declined to discuss the split, and when they do, they both evidence continuing respect for one another. She recently told someone, "it simply got to be too painful for the benefits it produced." Russo, while a tough negotiator in business, is a softy on the subject and a man you suspect of being, like Midler, alien to the "make nice" PR fluff of the film industry. "I've simply refused to discuss it with everyone who has asked," he says. "it is too fresh." 

There is another forgotten man. Russo has been generally credited with taking Midler from the chorus of Fiddler on the Roof, off-Broadway adsurdist theater, and Hilly's Club in Greenwich Village to the Continental Baths and gay cult stardom to national sellouts. He was not her first manager. Budd Friedman, who owned Manhattan's Improv and now operates a similar club in Los Angeles, managed her for the first year, a year that carried her from the Improv, Paul's Mall in Boston, and Mr. Kelly's in Chicago to repeated performances on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson, and finally to her break-out and image-setting sixteen-week engagement at the Baths. 

When Friedman's Improvisation in L.A. burned down and was rebuilt, old friends like Andy Kaufman, Gabe Kaplan, and Robin Williams helped him reopen with benefit performances. Midler was not heard from. Still insisting that the Hollywood "ass-kissing," the adulation, the perks are transitory and not to be embraced, Midler has retreated like Streisand, like Fonda with her ecological groupies. She hired a duenna of a secretary to run a wall of interference around her. Interestingly, she picked Aaron Russo's production secretary from The Rose, Bonnie Bruckheimer.  "Bouncer Bonnie," as she is known to the squads of Fox publicity vice-presidents and her own Rogers and Cowan PR representatives, who have been frustrated in their attempts to get to Bette and help publicize the film. 

Time may prove that Midler has taken the right course by simply continuing to work. If it’s on film, if the film is good, she may not need to banter with the bulldogs of the press.  Instead, happy with her new album, Thighs And Whispers, she decided that she wanted to do some of the songs life.  Though Fox preferred she hadn’t, she set up a four-city tour and buried herself in twelve-hour daily rehearsals.  She went to the Mark Taper Forum to have a breakaway wedding dress made up for a reprise of “Going To The Chapel.”  It breaks away to reveal a golden chastity belt.  Bob Mackie designed the balance of the gowns for the mini tour that included Tucson, Arizona, Concord, California; and L.A.’s Greek Theatre.    

If The Rose is as successful as Fox executives are predicting, Bette will take the character of The Rose on tour next year.  “I’d like to be that character on stage again,” she has said.  One day, after she has had a chance to devote a portion of her concerts to pure rock-and-roll, she’d like to sing the blues (if was her “Am I Blue” that first sold Budd Friedman) 

“But who’s going to pay $17.50 to see a small (5’1), full-breasted blond sing the blues”, she asked.  The line forms to the right, but we would bet she will be busy making more films.