Mister D: Nigel was kind enough to send this transcript in from the Parkinson Show. These UK interviewers (including reporters) seem to ask much more interesting questions (and therefore better interviews) of Bette than their US counterparts. Don’t know why that is, but our entertainment journalists should take notice and learn a thing or two….anyway here’s Nigel, then the transcript:
They cut a few bits from the recorded show – mainly the joke and that fact that Bette said she wanted to sit home watch TV and get fat like everyone else!
(Michael: There are degrees of fabulous. B: That’s right. Audience member: You’re amazing. B: Thank you, I know. And I’m so relieved! (Laughter) It could have been so dreadful, oh the jowls. We won’t discuss it, well later. – (***I think the audience member was Colette!***)
No news on any other appearances, so maybe she’s back in NYC already!
(Mister D: I’ve found out through Ms. Midler’s office that she will not be a guest on The Steven Wright radio show on BBC.
Hope all is well
Regards,
Nigel
Bette Midler Transcript on Parkinson
Michael: My final guest tonight is one of the great entertainer of our time. She started her career singing in gay bath houses with Barry Manilow accompanying her. It became a lifetime collaboration. Her latest venture is an album of Peggy Lee songs produced by Barry Manilow. Singing a song forever associated with Peggy Lee, I Am A Woman, welcome please Bette Midler. (Applause) (Bette Midler performs I Am A Woman – Applause)
Michael: It has been a while.
B: Well thirty years, that’s nothing!
Michael: Thirty years. You’ve just got older and better.
B: Well I do look fabulous, I have to say. You look fabulous but I really look fabulous.
Michael: There are degrees of fabulous.
Photo: Thanks for the scan, Sara, Queen of the Dutchies
B: That’s right. Audience member: You’re amazing. B: Thank you, I know. And I’m so relieved! (Laughter) It could have been so dreadful, oh the jowls. We won’t discuss it, well later.
Michael: I love the album, the Peggy Lee album.
B: Thank you very much.
Michael: Why Peggy Lee?
B: Well Barry Manilow came to me a couple of years ago and I hadn’t heard from this guy in years. And he calls me up in the middle of the blue and he said, ‘I had a dream.’ And I’m, ‘He had a dream about me!’ I’m thinking, what’s coming. I was completely freaked out, we had not parted on good terms and I’m thinking what does he want from me? And he said he’d had a dream that we went into the studio and recorded a tribute to Rosemary Clooney, she was actually a friend of mine. I had known her, I’d watched her and she was one of the kindest people I’d ever met in the business. And when he asked me to do this I immediately said yes of course, because she had recently passed away and so I took this and I was afraid of the material but I did it. So last year he called me again and said, ‘Guess what, I had another dream!’ So well uh oh, what was this dream? And it was Peggy Lee and I didn’t really know her that well. I knew her hits from when I was a kid and from the years and some of the material was so brilliant but I was more interested in the energetic performers and she was so kind of cool, this great allure, great sex appeal. Never sang really very loudly although she could, she had great chops. She did, she was a tremendous technician but she had this very sophisticated way of performing. And I loved her but I didn’t think I could do the stuff.
Michael: That’s not precisely your style is it?
B: No, I’m a belter. I’m a shouter. But this was really interesting, it was a hard lesson to learn. When you examine the material that he had chosen for me, most of it was the blues and I was surprised because I never thought of her as a blues singer but she was basically a blues singer, everything was minor changes and blue notes and she covered a lot of major blues songs.
Michael: Now this relationship you had with Mr Manilow, it goes back many years. Now I don’t want to take you back into the bath houses for too long.
B: He doesn’t look as good as me!
Stephen: Back into them? You’ve been in before then.
Michael: No I’ve not been in. Don’t get ahead of yourselves please. No no. The point is that the last time we met, thirty years ago we talked about this but I didn’t ask you and it’s been worrying me ever since…
B: Was I wearing a towel? Were they wearing a towel?
Michael: Were they nude or not?
B: No they had towels around their private parts, sort of low slung. No I never saw a penis. (Laughter) And I was looking very hard.
Stephen: Did you want to? I didn’t bring it anyway. (Laughter)
B: it’s getting hot in here.
Michael: So this nude audience.
B: Well no I never thought of them that way, I thought of them as a paying crowd. I didn’t care what they were wearing. I was so poor, we were all so poor in those days. And I had been working for $200 a week for years in Fiddler on the Roof and I couldn’t get a raise, I asked for a $25 raise and they refused to give me a raise. And this guy was paying me $300 for two nights so I didn’t care what they were wearing. And they were so sweet. They were so shocked that there was anyone there singing that they would come from all over, you know all over the building and they would sit there and I made an effort to be a friend. I had a friend write jokes for me and I was very au current with the gay scene and I had the lingo and so they thought oh look a drag queen! (Laughter)
Michael: And out of that came the first record. Which is a foundation really.
B: And we had worked on that material for very many years, that was basically my nightclub act. And that’s a live record, very few people know that but I had made a record with Joel Dawn and when the head of the label heard it he said, I think we should do this live and so we had some booze and we had an audience in the studio and we made a live record.
Stephen: And that was the Divine Miss M.
Michael: Did you when you were a child, I mean you had a very poor background.
B: Yeah, very very poor but not any more! (Laughter)
Michael: But did you dream?
B: Oh my god I couldn’t stop dreaming, it was a bore after a while! I mean I could not wait to get out. I was so, we used to get magazines, we didn’t get them but I used to go to the library and look at them. Because we were in Hawaii which was three thousand miles away from what we called the mainland. And so they were living this life that we had no idea how people lived this way. And we would see these photographs and go wow. And you’d see pictures of Truman Capote’s black and white ball and you’d go, wow. We just couldn’t wait to get out there.
Michael: When did you decide to be a legend though?
B: Well in my mind when I was about three years old. I always thought of myself, I always called people divine when I was about six years old. ‘Darling that’s divine.’ (Laughter)
Stephen: Is it true that your mother named you after Bette Davis?
B: My mother named me after Bette Davis yes. My mother called her Bette but it was Betty. Of course when I told this to Miss Davis she was not amused! ‘Oh really.’ (Laughter) (Commercial break)
Michael: You celebrated your sixtieth recently.
B: I did, I’m sixty years old. (Applause)
Michael: Did you have a party?
B: I did, my husband threw a party for me, it was a huge party, it was the best party I was at in my life. And I never expected, I knew I was having a party but I had know idea where or who was going to be there. So I got dressed up, got there, it was at a consecrated synagogue but it was very beautiful. High ceilings and they’d put Hawaiian flowers all over the place and there were so many wonderful people. And we sang and we danced and everybody had a blast and people did little songs for me and at the end of the party my husband brought out a cake for me and it was shaped like a giant ham! (Laughter) I mean it was a chocolate cake in the shape of a giant ham and it was sliced! And the slices were laying there. That was so hysterical because that was my life lying there on a platter. (Laughter)
Stephen: In the synagogue.
B: People were beside themselves.
Michael: Are you as bawdy now as you were?
B: That’s a great word. Well I’m tired, I don’t have the energy to be bawdy!
Stephen: Have you lost the wind beneath your wings?
B: No, I have definitely not. No it’s a puff. No I’m still interested, I still love the world, I’m still interested in human beings. I’m still interested in the Arts although it’s hard these days, it’s mostly well I don’t know. Maybe for younger people, I don’t know. Well I’m still curious but I don’t have quite the will that I once had.
Michael: Not you.
B: Well there is a time when you’re supposed to shuffle off the stage and leave it to younger people.
Michael: Only if you can’t do it.
B: That is not true. You can really get hurt badly by doing it past your time. People fall into pits. I mean Bing Crosby fell into the pit and Marlene Deitrich fell into the pit and people just fall into the pit.
Stephen: (About Michael) I mean look at him, it’s tragic isn’t it? (Laughter)
B: He’s too young to shuffle off just yet.
Michael: Absolutely, I’ve in no mood to. Nor should you actually.
B: As long as I have a big net over the pit.
Michael: The big complaint is that we’ve not seen you here live for many many years and we’d love to.
B: Well I am sorry, I got busy, had a family got married. Well I got married and then I had a family and I did pictures for a long time and had great time making people laugh and then that seemed to be over and I took that cue. And I went back into live performing and I’ve had so much fun with that and I do have a show that I’d like to bring over.
Michael: Kiss my Brass?
B: Kiss my Brass. But it’s too big, it’s masses and it costs. I mean I’d have to pay. I mean I love you but…
Michael: Well you took that show to Australia.
B: I did but I put it on a boat. It’s cheaper if you put it on a boat. I’d have to put it on a boat tomorrow in order for it to be here by December. I’ll think of something. I’ll be back. (Applause) It’s embarrassing that I didn’t come back. I’m ashamed of myself.
Michael: You’ve legions of fans here.
Stephen: There’s twice the number of gay people that there were thirty years and they want you.
Michael: Well in the mean time we’ll have to content ourselves with the album. It’s a lovely album and I’m a Peggy Lee fan too and it’s a difficult job to do tribute to her but you have, it’s lovely.
B: Thank you and I’d like to encourage everyone out there to who is interested, to go online and find Peggy Lee because the original material is absolutely stunning and you will be very very happy, she’s a genius.
Michael: Bette Midler it’s been worth the wait. Thank you. (Applause)
