USA Today
That Mama Mia Moment In “The Fabulous Four”
By Patrick Ryan
August 16, 2024
Spoiler alert! The audio you’re looking for is a couple of lines down. Enjoy!
It’s a bright, sunshiny day for fans of Bette Midler.
The three-time Grammy Award winner shows off her golden pipes in bridal comedy “The Fabulous Four,” singing a duet of Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now” with “Abbott Elementary” star Sheryl Lee Ralph.
Bette Midler & Sheryl Lee Ralph: I Can See Clearly Now
The performance happens during the end credits, after Marilyn (Midler) decides to call off her rushed wedding in order to focus on friendship and herself. Never one to waste a fabulous gown, she chooses to throw a massive party instead, dancing and warbling along the Florida coast with her best gal pals Kitty (Ralph), Alice (Megan Mullally) and Lou (Susan Sarandon)
Susan Sarandon, left, Megan Mullally, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Bette Midler close out “The Fabulous Four” with a choreographed dance number.© Provided by Bleecker Street
It’s a welcome return to music for Midler, 78, who most recently recorded a handful of covers for the “Hocus Pocus 2” soundtrack in 2022. She last performed on Broadway in a revival of “Hello, Dolly!” in 2017, although she tells USA TODAY she’d consider coming back to New York to do “Mame.”
The “Fabulous Four” performance came about – as most great numbers do – during brunch. Midler and Ralph, 67, were shooting in Savannah, Georgia, when they went out to eat with director Jocelyn Moorhouse and producer Richard Barton Lewis.
“We were talking about – I don’t know, sunshine and joy and this and that,” Midler recalls. “Sheryl started to sing ‘I Can See Clearly Now,’ and so I chimed in. Richard literally jumped out of his chair and said, ‘That’s it! We’re going to do it!’ Sheryl and I both looked at each other like, ‘What have we done?’ ”
Moorhouse remembers the impromptu duet brought her to tears.
“Everyone at the tables around us seemed to know who they were,” Moorhouse says. “So when they started harmonizing together, the whole room stopped what they were doing and just watched the two legends, awestruck.”
Initially, Midler didn’t think they would get the rights to the feel-good reggae classic, which was released in 1972 and peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. It has since been covered by Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, and most famously, Jimmy Cliff for the “Cool Runnings” movie soundtrack in 1993. But Lewis fought for the song’s inclusion in “Fabulous Four.”
“Music licensing is really expensive!” Midler says. “This movie was made for a certain budget and we weren’t supposed to go over it. In fact, I believe that Sheryl had to pay for her own coffee one time, but we’re not going to go into that. Nevertheless, he went and got that song, and it turned into a real thing.”
Thank you very much for sharing! In Europe, the movie is not available yet and I am glad to hear Bette singing. She sounds fresh and relatively young for 78, don’t you think? 🙂
Yes she sounds great for 78. I loved she got to sing.
Ok, just to let people know, the spoiler is already present on the second line LOL
She sounds great. She’s said she lost a few of her higher notes, but I don’t give a shit. LOL. She sounds great to me.
Just choose the songs you feel good about and record an album for us, Mama!