Bette Midler seems to have found a home on the Disney lot where she recently made Touchstone’s “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” is set to start “Ruthless People” next month and expects to film her Ina Bay Hutton bio-pic in late 1986.
“It’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” she says of the film about the leader of the all-girl band of the ’30s and ’40s.
“It’ll be a full-blown musical.”
And will be made under the banner of All-Girls – the production company in which Bette is partners with Margaret Jennings and Bonnie Bruckheimer.
“Ruthless People” will be produced by “Airplane!” filmmakers Jerry and David Zucker and Jim Abrahams and will have Bette playing a “kidnappee who’s the meanest woman in the world – it’ll be quite a stretch.” It was recently being talked up as a project for Madonna, but as far as Midler is concerned, “I’m thrilled to be doing anything Madonna turned down.” She reports Danny DeVlto and Judge Relnhold will join her in the “Ruthless” farce.
She also reports that when that project wraps – and before the Ina Ray Hutton film rolls – she intends to be back on Broadway with an updated version of her “Clams on the Half Shell” show of 1975.
Meanwhile… The Divine Miss M is helping launch her new “Bette Midler: Mud Will be Flung Tonight!” LP and trying to get her domestic life in order. She and commodities trader Martin von Haselberg, her husband of a year, are remodeling their West Hollywood home and in Bette’s words, “We’re living in chaos!”
