Surprise! Bette’s grown up
Sunday News - March 7, 1976
Stan Mieses 

As soon as the TV camera lights dimmed, Bette Midler lurched out from behind the interviewer's desk and shot her legs out like switchblades, cutting the rug up the ramp to her backstage dressing room where she flopped down on a couch and shrugged.

She had just suffered an inane session with the Philadelphia press corps. (Q: "How do you get your vitality!" A: "I eat a lot"; Q: "What do you think of sex?" A: “It's better than eating") and the strain of her high-watt smile had given way to burned­-out bewilderment.

On the last leg of a 20-city tour that winds up in the Westchester Premier Theater in Tarrytown on March 21-28, Bette is tottering on her own last leg as well.

Appendicitis in Los Angeles, a bowel infec­tion in the Southwest and bronchitis in Boston have all played nonsupporting roles to the Divine Miss M. Add to that, just sheer exhaustion from her characteristically manic two hour-plus performance, and we are left with a still-pugnacious redhead who still punches her way through the routines, but she's obviously been coached to take better shots now.

Bette seriously folks: "Yes, I've surrendered to the people in my corner. I've got the greatest man­ager in the world, the people working with me are great; I'm surrendering more and more." Interesting stuff from a personality whose instincts go one-on-­one against the world. Things have changed, time has changed them. No longer is Bette the chubby little Jewish girl from Honolulu; just one of many perky chorus girls; a tease for the boys in the baths. She may translate the emotional household she grew up in, but the result is going to be a more adult performance, so she says, and convincingly.

"I'd like to be in control of my emotions, rather than them be in control of me. In my house, every­one let go. No mysteries. If you're high-spirited and emotional, you find yourself in hot water most of the time. It's the hardest part of maturing. As much as I hate to grow up, I would like not to grow up . . ." She faced her palms up and shrugged again: "But it's time."

Suddenly, it's time because the offers she's re­ceived lately have blown the whistle for her. The peanut-faced redhead is a natural for the movies, and Columbia Pictures is investing close to $3 million to put it across. Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, long hungry for Bette's services, will get them and pay a pretty penny, to be sure.

The time has come for Bette's admitted diesel drive to be re-routed. The depression over critiques has seen its day, she says. "I've taken to not really caring. I'm deadly serious, I have very little sense of humor about my work.

"I'd like to become a great actress - there, it's out!" she said, with her hands dishing it. "I started that way, you know. I studied with Strasberg - I didn't understand a blinking thing. They had no sense of humor - and I've learned a lot since. I'd like to do a comedy full of whimsy." She shifted shoulders and posed for her shtick. Her eyes got crinkly and her teeth chiclety. "I'd like to make the perfect comedy, the perfect musical, and the perfect melo­drama. Anything less than that will be dissatisfying."

But, in a moment's reversal, a doll's face reap­peared and she earnestly said: "I'd like to do a classic, sure. I can take direction, that's not the hard part. The hard part is figuring out yourself, being able to churn up all those instincts and make it yourself."

The sheer inertia of Bette's drive to "the top" has made it difficult for her to do just that. While her recording career has perhaps suffered from the stripping of Bette's in-the-flesh appeal, her live performances break box office records, with "Clams on the Half Shell," her 1975 Broadway revue topping $1.8 million for a 10-week engagement. And the demands became overbearing. The success of "Clams" was crucial to Bette's career. After an initial box-office breaking run in 1973, the failure of her second album to sell well and the resultant problems with press and management deflated the here-to-fore un­flappable Midler.

Bette recalls: “I was on the way up, young and innocent" - and she says that without any mock eye batting or Garboesque hand-flutter - "and I didn't know that when you're on top, people took it upon themselves to shove you down. I thought I would be beloved. I thought they would love it for me. But they throw you out like yesterday's news. I didn't know that, really. I couldn't understand it either. I feel I'm generally generous," she laughed and took note of the phrase, "especially in terms of my performing. I would love it for someone else."

The showbiz people with diesel drive running in different directions "scared the hell out of me. I think in a roundabout way, that's why I took the time off. I needed a respite from the drive. After a while you get worn out. I'm not going to compare Garbo, but I think she made the right decision."

Not yet for Bette. Though she tried out a half dozen producers for her current album, "Songs For the New Depression," she says she's not through in that department. "I intend, before I die, to go through everyone," she winks. "I work with everyone to learn," she says. "And I don't care what they say about me - I've got to learn." About the Las Vegas deal, she understands that it's a very good deal. "It's just another aspect of entertaining. Lots of divas have played Las Vegas, not to their discredit. A stage is a stage. Listen, the real satisfaction comes from every day and night of the work."

Later, we watched her work a packed house that roared with approval at Bette's wild entrance. She looked part Pagliacci and part Ragamuffin in multi­-colored taffeta hitched into wedding cake layers, and beaded silver thigh-high slit gown, and shifted into an outrageous medley of deep-dish "cheese," her new word for "trash," she became Rita Hayworth doing Belle Barth. The audience never stopped reacting. She didn't hold still for two hours and twenty min­utes. If she had, as she had earlier in the day, things might have gotten serious. If they do, Bette-r days are coming. As she loves to say so often: “There's a movie in there somewhere."