Bette Midler
A Girl Finds Fame And Fortune In A Turkish Bath
Author Unknown


A homosexual Turkish bath on New York's West 74th Street became the "in" place to go on Saturday nights a year ago, a phenomenon brought about almost single handedly by a young performer named Bette Midler, a little Jewish girl from Hawaii who had come to New York in the mid-sixties to seek fame and fortune on the Broadway stage. A small role in Fiddler on the Roof didn't help her realize that goal but it did provide three years of employment. A short stint as a replacement in the off-Broadway musical Salvation followed, as did some Jewish revues in the Catskills and an off-off Broadway play called Miss Nefertiti Regrets.

Then, as Bette puts it, ''nothing much was happening, when this nut Steven Ostrow came along and said, 'Honey, I just hired the chic Richard Orbach to redecorate the Continental Health Club and I'm thinking of putting in entertainment. How would you like to sing in the baths?' As in Turkish! As in the boys! 'Sure,' I said, 'what've I got to lose? It's better than being a go-go girl in a Broadway bar,' which is what I was doing at the time."

Word spread through the underground like a spurt of steam that a small, (5 ft. 1 in.) funny-looking girl with a head of unleashed hair and a red slash of lipstick for a mouth was creating a sensation on West 74th Street. Word got to Mr. Middle America himself - Johnny Carson - who discovered Bette and started featuring her on his show. The uninhibited Miss M revelled in telling the nation about the subterranean nightspot where the customers were clothed in little more than white strips of terrycloth and the temperature never fell below 90°. Soon the fame of Bette and The Continental Baths surfaced aboveground.

To the horror of many of the bath's regulars, the Establishment rushed to cover the proceedings in this steam spa and everybody from Mick Jagger to Helen Gurley Brown to Rex Reed made the trip to the Continental to see Bette. Margaret Whiting was in the audience one night and became so enthusiastic that she got up and belted out a few numbers herself.

Discussing the baths, she says, "Me and those boys, we just went somewhere else. It was so much fun. I had the best time. It was something I just had to do and I did it for them and I did it all. It was the best experience in the world. I mean you have to be good to keep those guys fascinated. Gawd. The moment I'd bore them, well, they could go upstairs and shower.

"I loved those boys at the baths because they were the first audience to encourage me. They will always mean a lot to me, but that doesn't mean that I can't branch out and reach other people as well."

Bette lapses into a moment's silence while sitting in her plant-filled Greenwich Village apartment, then abruptly continues, "I'm paranoid to begin with. I make my living doing who I am and who I am is a lot different from a lot of people. So occasionally when all this tension starts building up in me, I start thinking they'll come and cart me away. In order to keep from freaking out I transcend it. I rise above it. Physically and mentally both. I say, 'Now you just stop that! Now don't be paranoid!' And then I say, 'Ahhh, I'm above it all, above it all!' "

She says introspectively, "What I'm doing just isn't all that important. Not in the universal scheme. I'd like to be thought of as a hot singer. But then, sometimes, I don't know. I feel guilty. I'm not doing enough to make the world better. Things are really, really bad. I should have been a social worker or a nurse. I've seen so much unhappiness, so much."

Then a smile bursts forth on her face. "I like to think of my music as something positive. I would really like to wake up people in this country a bit and say to them that they really are alive. They've had a bad time of it in the past ten years. There isn't a lot of humor around today. I'm trying to say 'Let's have fun. Don't be afraid to show your emotions,' "

Johnny Carson had Bette on the bill with him when he played Las Vegas last year. When the subject is brought up, Bette says, "Las Vegas! Puh-leeze, honey, that was really bizarre. The audience was really weird - all the women wore wigs - and I don't think they knew what to make of me, where I was coming from at all. I hated Vegas, but it was fascinating as an experience - to have it behind you, you know?"


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Henry's Hotline
By Henry Luhrman

Songwriter Mary Rodgers said at Manhattan's DeMedici that there is a possibility her show Once Upon A Mattress, which catapulted Carol Burnett to stardom, might be revived with Bette Midler in the lead roll.