Altoona Mirror
Names in the News
Wednesday. December 13,1989
-BETTE MIDLER says her own mom inspired her performance as Stella, an impoverished mother who raises an illegitimate daughter alone.
“I had a fabulous mother,” Ms. Midler said in the January issue of Ladies’Home Journal “She made me believe in myself and I used a lot of her in the film,” a remake of the 1937 Barbara Stanwyck drama, “Stella Dallas.”
“She was not a single parent like Stella, but we were poor and she was ihat generation of women, almost all gone now, who always put their family ahead’bf themselves. She worked hard and kept nothing for herself – nothing. Never a new dress or new shoes.
“She adored me, my mom, and I still have nightmares about her, because as a grownup, I didn’t give her the time I should have. Now that she’s gone, I have regrets.”
Midler said she is devoted to life with her husband, Martin Von Haselberg, and their daughter, Sophie, 3.
