Bette Midler in 'Rolling Stone . . . The 10th Anniversary'
She's Back!  'The Divine Miss M'
Harry Harris

Special thanks to Ronni Jensen for sharing this article 


"I hadn't worked 'live' for more than a year-I'd been busy every day, on other projects, including two albums-and you can forget what it is you do. You have to keep your machine oiled. It gets rusty. It's wonderful to see that you can still make them laugh and cry, even if it's only for 10 minutes, before they fall back into the usual doldrum of life."
-Bette Midler

Enough already of "Tinker Bell" and "Miss Goody Two Shoes!" Bette Midler, who says her wildly uninhibited other self, "The Divine Miss M," has been virtually mothballed for the past year, demothballs with a vengeance in CBS' two-hour all-star special, "Rolling Stone ... The 10th Anniversary," Friday at 9 p.m.

So much so, in fact, that CBS sent a lengthy memo listing Midler shenanigans to be excised, specifying in explicit terms the gestures, expletives and jokes that it considered no-nos.

Rolling Stone, the often-raunchy rock music magazine that published its first edition on Nov. 9, 1967, recently printed parts of the memo, including phrases taboo in most periodicals.

"Midler was, however," the Rolling Stone item concluded, "allowed to say `rat's ass' and tell her Sonny Bono 'bazoom' joke."

What was the joke? The petite but voluptuous Miss Midler, who's usually dynamic and devilish on stage, but was unexpectedly soft-voiced and genteel on the California end of our telephone hook-up, dismissed it as nothing much, especially after CBS "xed out the punchline."

"People inspire you to make cracks," she said. "I said that Sonny (who was married to the relatively curveless Cher) was looking at me very quizzically, very peculiarly.

"He can't figure out if it's all me,' I said. `He's never been with a woman with a bazoom before!"'

She declined to furnish statistics on what constituted "all me." "It's so 1950s," she said.

She was irked because Rolling Stone printed the memo.

"It's just like them," she said. "They're so nervous. They're afraid their readers will think they've gone Establishment. They probably felt they had to print it, so everyone would know they're still hip, with hair down to their shoulders!"

It isn't because of any special fondness for the publication, she stressed, that she agreed to make her first network TV appearance since guesting in the 90-minute CBS special marking Bing Crosby's 50th show business anniversary that was initially aired last March and posthumously repeated Oct. 23.

"I have no loyalty to Rolling Stone. They've been consistently rude to me since 1973. But I like to do television, because every time you do a show, you learn a little more.

"I knew Steve Binder, the producer-director, from other shows, and when I was told who else would be on and what the program was trying to do (explore the world impact of rock music and its associated culture), it seemed like a good idea."

Other participants include Steve Martin, Sissy Spacek, Martin Sheen, Phoebe Snow, Richie Havens, Patti LaBelle, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Art Garfunkel, Keith Moon, The Coasters, Melissa Manchester, Billy
Preston and, as a dancer, Lesley Ann Warren.

Another reason she agreed to guest on the show: "I hadn't worked `live' for more than a year - I'd been busy every day, on other projects, including two albums - and you can forget what it is you do.

"You have to keep your machine oiled. It gets rusty. It's wonderful to see that you can still make them laugh and cry, even if it's only for 10 minutes, before they fall back into the usual doldrum of life.

"It was all good-humored. There was nothing gross or filthy. A little was taken out but it was not as vile as that memo made it seem.

"I did two one-hour concerts at a night club in Hollywood, Sept. 12. They're using three of my songs and a whole lot of talking. I worked with Formerly the Harlettes, the three back-up singers I was with longest, and did one number with Jerry Lee Lewis.

"The first show, the one they actually ended up using, was very sedate. It was very good for the camera but not good for the crowd, which wanted to carry on, jump up and down and break furniture.

"The second show was wild and free. You have to coddle an audience and warm it up a little. I carried on some, trying to get them excited, and trying to get myself* excited, too.

"It was done for the audience's sake. I've learned a little about editing, so I know what can be taken out. They didn't use it but I had a wonderful time!"

Other considerations may have prompted Miss Midler's appearance in the Rolling Stone special. Her new album, "Broken Blossom," was released last week. She's just begun a five city tour that will include Philadelphia ("my favorite town"). And she'll have a TV special of her own - her first - on NBC Dec. 7.

Taped June, July and the last two days of September, it has as her guests circus clown Emmett Kelly ("I've always loved him"), another set of Harlettes, a group of Hawaiian dancers ("I do a sort of demented hula") and movie star Dustin Hoffman.

A couple of years ago ABC proudly announced that Miss Midler had signed a $3 million pact for several specials. The first one was abruptly
canceled last year, reportedly because Miss Midler and her manager "insisted on total control."

Does her switch to NBC indicate that that network is more permissive?

"'Permissive' has the wrong connotation. Let's say more `generous.' They didn't interfere. They didn't make me feel what I was doing was wrong. They let me go along making my 
own mistakes.

"The problem at ABC was mainly a matter of guests. They wanted a strictly variety format, with me as star and hostess, but with all the guests chosen from their other TV shows.

"I couldn't imagine anything drearier. If you ran a contest on how to have the dullest TV show, that would win.

"They give you a list of their people, and you have your pick of Wonder Woman or Lassie the Wonder Dog, according to who's being pushed.

"It's all politics. It has nothing to do with talent or taste.

"On top of that, they want you to do garbage-skit stuff."

In her NBC special Miss Midler feels that she emerges as both "The Divine Miss M" and "my little Shangri-La girl who's been back home in the closet, the person I was before I discovered `Miss M.'

"It's a kind of mixture. Some of it is fast-moving and fast-talking, but there are gentle moments, too. Everyone has more than one side."

She tried to alter her public persona a while back, she said, but no one realized it-"If you don't put out press releases about a change, people don't pick it up.,

"I was affected by a lot of the stuff I read about pornography and child abuse. When all the talk began about ,snuff' films (in which women were allegedly killed and dismembered to titillate audiences), I was really appalled.

"I felt someone had to make some little statement about humanity, about pulling back, about not being so crazed in the name of entertainment.

"I had my antennae up, my feelers out, and I decided I wanted to get myself as far away as possible from that kind of thing.

"I decided to make changes - in what I did, what I wore, not what I said. Language is different. Everybody is allowed to use language.

"I figured it was a time for innocence - `Let's be children.' Someone has to discipline you. If not your parents, yourself. If no one stopped me, I felt, I'd end up being a stripper - and that's something I'm saving for when I'm 75 and no one cares.

"I tried to he different on my last tour. I toned down the way I dressed. It was still like your stolen-car kind of outfit, but it wasn't really sexy. Everything was large and loose, so you couldn't see any shape. It was all very innocent, sort of funny, more clownish, like an overgrown baby, rather than a sextet or a sophisticated woman of the world.

"So what happened? Because I was wearing costumes layers thick, they said I'd put on a lot of weight and was trying to hide it!
"I guess I looked like a pincushion but I enjoyed being sweet and vulnerable. It helped me a lot. It was good for my mental state. There's nothing wrong with reining yourself in. It's like `stretching.' You learn something new."

Will her NBC special be the first of several? "Now that I've done one, I'd like to do another. But it's the network's option.

"If the ratings are bad, what can you do about it? Ratings have nothing to do with talent.

"Maybe my feelings will be hurt for a while, but a low rating is nothing to be ashamed of.

"What's important is whether your work is good and you're proud of it, whether you've accomplished what you set out to do. You have to set standards for yourself, something to hang on to for your own sake!"