Bette Midler On Her Parents: “They were very supportive of each other. My dad didn’t make a lot of money but they were very thrifty people. He earned about 60 bucks a week as a house painter. And my mother was raising four kids, it was that kind of ethic: You worked; you just worked. But my parents had a dream of getting into real estate. They managed to buy a house ”“ four or five houses, actually ”“ in the best neighborhood in town, which they subsequently rented out. Every Saturday and Sunday my father was there pounding, painting, gardening, and this and that, trying to make the house livable. It was quite a feat. My mom had a dream that she would get out of the poor neighborhood, where she was cut off from her friends and very isolated, and have a home. She focused on their real estate investments as the way out. And, by God, she got her house. She never moved into it, but she got it.” (1996)
