Flashy, trashy, and with enough warmth and energy to get the whole country through the winter, The Divine Miss M wowed ’em.
And the audience that responded to her with cheers, with laughter, with joy – was one that actually did represent the whole country:
“Straight and gay; aboveground and underground; unisex and duo-sex; Middle American and radic-lib; chic and frumpy; escapees from apartments for singles and escapees from retirement homes – they all turned out for the one performer on today’s scene they could all share with equal enthusiasm.”
Newsweek‘s Charles Michener probes into the Midler mystique (“an unmistakable vulnerability, a heart-stopping innocence . . . an intuition for what the public has been hungering for without yet realizing it”) and finds the enthusiasm well deserved. Bette Midler does have something for everybody.
