Interview featured in handbills
 
She has created an excitement in the show business world that reaches the stratospheric level of 'phenomenon.'  She has captured the fancy of the public and of her peers.  Her shows are events, tickets are scarce.  Her record albums are eagerly awaited by adoring fans who turn the discs into smash sellers.  She is coy, she is witty, her voice can sound as forceful as a trumpet or as soft and luxurious as the finest satin.  She has a charisma and she has pizzazz.  She is at home in a myriad of music styles.  She is Bette Midler, and she's at is again.  Her 20-city, 80 performance tour is about to embark.  Her new album, "Songs For The New Depression," is going to be released shortly, and her two previous gold albums are still selling stronger throughout the country.  Couple all this with the imminent motion picture and television deal, and you have a brief idea as to what Bette Midler is all about - the most exciting female performer in show business today.   

But what is Bette really like?  To find out, you merely have to ask.  

Q:	What were you like when you were growing up in Honolulu?
A:	I was a little chubbier than I am now.

Q:

Your mother named you for Bette Davis?

A:

Yes, my mother was VERY showbiz.  Not my father.  His idea of showbiz is Lawrence Welk.  He ADORES Lawrence Welk.  My mother loved television.  She used to send us to the movies, and she was very particular about the kinds of movies she'd send us to.  No dramas.  No horror movies.  As a result, I never saw a horror movie until I was 22 years old.  My folks you see, liked hula dancing, but not the darker things in life.

Q:	Would you consider your stage act very bawdy?
A:	Yes, yes it is.  Isn't it lucky?

Q:	Is it a reaction to all those happy sexless movies you must have seen as a child?
A:	Well, I guess so.  I really like to laugh and I like a dirty joke.

Q:	How did you finally manage to get out of Honolulu?
A:	I flew.  In 1965, I took this money I had made as an extra in the movie "Hawaii" and flew to the Coast and then to New York.

Q:	What did you feel like when you first started to look for theatre work?
A:	Like a piece of meat.

Q:

Where do you get your music?

A:

I find my songs by reading.  I read song sheets like literature.  Sometime I pick them by titles like "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."  You see, I always liked the Andrew Sisters, but I'd never heard that song before.  So one time, this guy, an actor from The Second City, came up to me and said: "You know you should look into "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."  I just fell down and  laughed because of the alliteration.  I went right out the next day and hunted it down.  And sure enough, it was this terrific wonderful song.

Q:	When you finally did manage to make it big, it happened because you had become the house singer to the male homosexual community.  How did that come about?
A:	Because I started at the Continental Baths.  I'm up from the tubs, as they say.  I had a lot of push from After Dark, which is the "gay, tasteful middle-class gay persons" magazine.  They broke me out first nationally - and I brought them (the gays) all along with me.

Q:	You put on a very optimistic show.  Your theme song, "Friends," for instance, is all about how people should have lots of friends.  Is the positivism of your performance deliberate?
A:	Well, if you really look through it, there's a lot of sorrow to it.  The Classic comic treatment of performance is a mixture of pathos and hysterical laughter - of joy and sorrow.

Q:

Is there anything about the woman's movement that relates in a special way to your own life?

A:

Not a whole lot.  I try to help my girlfriends out.  Mostly, I'm trying to get out of that woman's thing of cutting other women down.  THAT I don't want to do anymore.  I am a bitch.  I am a bitch in the sense that I like the wonderful things about being a bitch, but not the negative things.  When I say bitch, I mean being on top of it, being aware and knowing the answers.  I like that part.  But I don't like doing it at the expense of other women.  I don't like to sit around and dish out the dirt with the girls.

Q:	You took your first vacation from work in nine years recently.  What impelled you?
A:	I think part of the reason I took a year off is because I really wanted a chance to grow up and out of the pain I had as a kid.  I traveled, listened to people, I did the things people do when they finally have a little time - not the things I should have done, though, because I'm really a shy person.  I went off my myself.

Q:	How would you best sum up your appeal?
A:	What I have is the ability to make people look at me.  It just comes on like a light bulb.  And it feels like a light bulb.  It feels warm inside.

Bette of course is modest.