Director Mark Rydell On Bette Midler: Hollywood failed her. When she appeared on the scene in The Rose, she stunned everybody into a kind of stupor of worship. But [the studios] didn’t know what to do with her. She is not a conventional beauty, not what is considered a normal movie star. She languished, she suffered, nothing happened for her. When Paul Mazursky asked me if she could play the part in Down and Out in Beverly Hills, I said, ‘She can play any part in anything; she’s the 800-pound gorilla!” (1991)
