Winnipeg Free Press
September 16, 1980
Midler movie ends festival
By Irish Worron
TORONTO (CP) – Francis Fox was booed, Nicholas Roeg collected a prize and the audience’went wild as Bette Midler wailed, danced, mimed and told dirty jokes in her new in-concert movie.
Midler was on hand for the premiere of her movie. Divine Madness,, which wrapped up Toronto‘s international film festival Saturday night.
Secretary of State Francis Fox, criticized in a Toronto newspaper by an unidentified festival source for not attending showings of the earlier Canadian films, was booed by the audience when welcomed by festival director Wayne Clarkson.
And Roeg, director of Bad Timing, which had its North American premiere the pitvious night, collected his award for most popular film, the only prize given at Festival of Festivals.
Earlier, Midler wiped away a tear when presented with a platinum album (for sales of more than 100,000 in Canada) from WEA Records for The Rose – the soundtrack of the movie about a rock ‘n’ roll star.
Her new movie is technically a one-woman concert but she transforms it into a variety show with the stable of characters she has built up over the years. They include Delores Delago, a demented cocktail-lounge singer with no taste and not much talent, a beautifully mimed wino, a foul-mouthed Sophie Tucker and a songstress delivering offbeat renditions of such 1940s tunes as Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, Midler’s first hit record.
Hmm, Canadians only know from hockey. Ice cold temperatures, frigid tundra, so they like Bette, hey? Hmmm who would have thought!
Hope for humanity after all….