Bette Midler gives a little lesson in showbiz
The singer shows you can be flashy and a little trashy while still remaining classy
02/08/04
KRISTI TURNQUIST
“I’m not retiring,” Bette Midler gleefully declared to a Rose Garden crowd Wednesday night. “And you can’t make me!”
Finally. Some good news.
In a week when the furor over Janet Jackson’s breast-baring Super Bowl stunt threatened to drown out all else, Midler’s “Kiss My Brass” revue was a necessary reminder that you can be trashy; you can be flashy; but, ladies, please — be a little classy.
Midler, of course, wrote the book on how to do it all: crack jokes so bawdy they make longshoremen blush; vamp with hip-shaking abandon; then croon misty-eyed ballads with melancholy grace.
Her Portland stop was part of Midler’s first tour in four years, and rarely has she been as welcome as now. A fabulous-looking 58, Midler seems such an institution that it’s easy to forget that she first hit big in the early 1970s, a veteran of club gigs and a career-igniting stint at a gay men’s bathhouse, where she developed her spoofy “Divine Miss M” diva persona. Flaunting her cleavage, cloud of Marlene Dietrich-style frizz, circa-’40s wardrobe and way with vintage tunes like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “Do You Want to Dance?” Midler won a following as devoted as it was varied: gay men, lesbians, hipsters, nostalgia buffs, anybody who appreciated a well-sung pop song.
Though she’s had her ups (an Oscar-nominated dramatic turn in “The Rose”; serenading Johnny Carson on his next-to-last “Tonight Show”) and downs (the dire Jacqueline Susann biopic, “Isn’t She Great”; the flop sitcom, “Bette”), the exuberantly entertaining “Kiss My Brass” show proves that, fortunately for us, Midler hasn’t really changed.
Unfortunately for us, however, the entertainment world around her has.
In Midler’s heyday, performers generally became the talk of the town because of their talent. Singing. Dancing. That sort of thing. In some cases, massive doses of charisma could make up for less-than-stellar chops (if not, Cher’s career would have ended long before her never-ending farewell tour came along).
But as the Janet/Justin Super Bowl spectacle made all too drearily clear, performers today seem convinced that the best way to boost your profile or goose CD sales is with attention-getting ploys staged for predictable uproar and 24-hour news channel rehashes. In this context, Midler is so old-fashioned she seems almost radical. Midler’s sassy back-up trio, The Staggering Harlettes, cavort in ’30s chorus-girl fashion while the star herself totters around on high heels, throwing in the occasional leg kick for choreographic oomph.
As for special effects, who needs ’em when you’ve got Midler, a one-woman history of show business? Through the course of her two-hour show, Midler channels the entire 20th century: She’s got the circa-’20s jokes of “Last of the Red-Hot Mamas” icon Sophie Tucker; ’30s-era Ginger Rogers “Follow the Fleet” sailor chic; ’40s-style Andrews Sisters vim with “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”; the plush, buttery ’50s sound of Rosemary Clooney (recently Midler reunited with her former piano player Barry Manilow for a Grammy-nominated tribute to Clooney); and ’60s girl-group fizz with “Chapel of Love.” But wait! There’s more: Broadway showstoppers, ’70s singer-songwriter tunes, rock ‘n’ roll, and middle-of-the-road pop with her hits, “From a Distance” and “Wind Beneath My Wings.”
Midler’s versatility is awesome, but it’s not an easy fit for an age of entertainment-as-niche-product. That much was evident Wednesday when some members of the audience — who may have known Midler only from the much-loved tearjerker movie “Beaches” — seemed taken aback by her salty wisecracks, saltier language, pointed zingers at George W. Bush and Rush Limbaugh and New York-hip observations about pop culture.
But if the audience sometimes had trouble keeping up with her — who else but Midler could transition from a gag about Liza Minnelli and David Gest to an achingly tender rendition of Randy Newman’s wistful classic, “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”? — Midler goes her own way.
During one moment in her “Soph” bit, Midler got tripped up in a particularly shaggy-dog joke. Most of the audience probably had no idea who Sophie Tucker was, or why, exactly, Midler was reheating these vaudeville chestnuts. “Are you out there?” Midler demanded, eyeing the crowd. “Are you dead?”
Willing to do whatever it took for a laugh, Midler flopped down to the stage floor, lying on her back as the laughter rose to meet her. By the time she took her bows, Midler had offended some and delighted others. But there was no question she had conducted a short course in Showbiz 101.
With a fully functioning wardrobe.
