Santa Fe New Mexican
December 23, 1985
Midler on marriage … A year ago, after a two-month courtship (“The food was great”), Bette Midler, the queen of flash~and-trash, married Martin von Haselberg, a commodities trader.
“The best! What a relief! Glad that’s over with.'” she says of life as a 40-year-old newlywed. “I discovered that you have to give in order to get, and that’s a big thing to learn at my age, but I’m learning, and l like it.”
She’s also learned from her earlier LPs, which produced a couple of hits, but no artistic focus. “I’ve never really found my voice.”
So her recently released album, the live “Mud Will Be Flung Tonight” (Atlantic), is the first that’s straight comedy rather than her usual mix of torch songs, pop and raunchy patter.
The Divine Miss M has scored in films (The Rose), Broadway (Clams on the Half Shell Revue) and books (A View From a Broad, “The Saga of Baby Divine.
Her film career, however, never bloomed. It earned her an Oscar nomination for 1979’s The Rose, but wilted from lack of a follow-up, and died after Jinxed flopped in 1983.
Now Midler is looking for a turnaround with the spring release of Paul Mazursky’s Down and Out in Beverly Hills, costarring Richard Dreyfuss and Nick Nolte.
