After Dark Bette Midler’s First Interview With After Dark – May 1971 By Neil Appelbaum May 1971
“I’m much more grotesque than Barbra Streisand.”
Oh yeah? I blinked a few times and looked closer. Bette Midler, wrapped casually in a sort of sleeveless square-shouldered Boysenberry blue robe with little springs of bright red cherries; sprinkled liberally all over it, looked back at me. Her hair was happily reminiscent of Coney Island cotton candy gone wrong, but there was absolutely nothing grotesqueabout her.
“Grotesque to me is not a bad word. Joe Cocker is grotesque. I think he’s brilliant. Janis Joplin was certainly grotesque. There are any number of performers around today who are above and beyond normal. Jackie Curtis is one. So is Holly,”
Woodlawn undoubtedly, but that reminded me of Haleioke (if you remember Julius LaRosa, you remember Haleloke), because Bette was born in Honolulu, her parents being expatriates from New Jersey.
“My mother and father were very eccentric. I adored them. My father liked machinery so there were five cars in the backyard, three refrigerators and six washing machines in the kitchen, and the living room had a buzz saw. Nothing worked. Unbelievable. Living in that house was heavy.
“I was miserable as a child – I guess it was because I looked like I do. “Media have told us we’re supposed to look a certain way. They really do a job on you. I used to try to dress like other people but I never got there. I was never together. That wasn’t my way. It would have been one thing if I had been a beautiful child, but I was a plain little fat Jewish kid. I spent a lot of time reading and listening to the radio. I had to find my own style or I was going to get screwed, but once I made my mind up it all fell into place.
“Meanwhile I was working on an assembly line in a pineapple factory. You see, only the middle part of the pineapple is used for slices – the tops and bottoms are crushed and chopped up and mashed – so I would sit there and all those sliced pineapples would come by and I would pick out the good slices to put in the cans. All day long I’d sit there and pick out pineapple slices.”
With your fingers?
“Oh, I wore rubber gloves. It was really sickening, but I needed the money.
“At sixteen I decided I wanted to be an actress, and eventually was on Broadway in Fiddler on the Roof for three years but it wasn’t what I wanted to do.”
Hmm … If she was sixteen then, she is now about . . .
“I’m thirteen. Some hoary old lady – I think it was one of my singing teachers – once told me never to give my age away. She turned purple in her face when she told me that, so I never forgot it,”
Bette got up to get me a cup of tea and I looked around the room.
A piano in one corner. A cello in one corner. A kettle drum in one corner. The fourth corner? I’II never tell.
Back with my Lipton’s, Bette stood looking out the window at the drizzle graying the view. Speaking of raindrops, Bette, what do you think of Burt Bacharach?
“I don’t think about Burt Bacharach. Ever! To me that’s Muzak. Music has to pick you up and throw you down again.
“I believe in entertainment. It has nothing to do with show business. It has to do with coming out and throwing vibrations out to an audience and putting them through changes. You know, it’s like making them seeing you an experience for them, that will either change their lives in some way or perhaps teach them something. I hate that word show business. I don’t feel like I’m in show business. It’s more important than show business. If I thought I was in show business I’d kill myself.
She shrugged and shook her head.
“I’ve only been singing for two years. I was in analysis for one year and I finally got up the nerve to tell the psychiatrist I wanted to quit. I couldn’t afford to pay for both singing lessons and him, too. So I just decided to sing.
“I did five David Frost shows, He was on in the afternoon. Nobody ever watched. Then I did seven Johnny Carsons. Did you see me do ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’? It’s a hysterical, funny number. They’ve never done a production like it on that show. They brought it all together and we all did it when we were in Hollywood. Oh, it was fabulous. They brought me out there because they couldn’t do a production number here – you know, here in New York – and they thought it would be a good idea if they did it there because they would have a bigger place to do it in – so we did it.
“Then I have a number that was written in 1934 called ‘Marijuana.’ Beautiful. That one’s really funny. It’s from Earl Carroll’s Murder at the Vanities. I want to do it on TV but I don’t know if they’ll let me. It’s a love song to Marijuana. This chick’s lost her lover… Oh, I love it. Want some grass?
Is the Pope Catholic?
Soon there’s a buzz. Maybe it’s the tea, I think. But no, it’s the doorbell.
“It’s my old man, Luther.”
Her old man turns out to be a tall, bearded, friendly looking young man in boots, khaki pancho and dripping, drooping wide-brimmed hat.
“Luther is very talented. I tell everybody about him. He’s a drummer – a percussionist, and also plays the cello.”
(Aha! Two corners.)
Luther says a few kindly words about the cello then drifts politely to another part of the apartment.
“Romance is really great for your work. When you have someone to love, your love comes out in your work. That’s one of the reasons I really look forward to relationships. I used to go out with someone I met at the Continental Baths. I like singing there. I go back every now and again. Sometimes announced, sometimes unannounced – I’m always coming and going at that place. The first time I left they gave me a party and a gigantic towel that said ‘Bette at the Baths.’ I’d show it to you but it’s in the laundry.”
Bette’s cleavage (which I was admiring discreetly) was becoming more intriguingly apparent with each of her descriptive gestures. “I want people to love me but I don’t want them to love me for the wrong reasons. Not because I remind them of someone else but because they see something of themselves in me. Like my Mae West routine is more my tough New York chorine than Mae West.”
She arched her neck, tilted her head to her right shoulder and delicately touched her finger tips to her decolletage.
“Ah, movies. I love movies. I spend most of my waking hours thinking I’m in a movie. I think that’s my trouble. It’s occurred to me that I could be in them, but I’d like to conquer the music part first. You know, at this stage of my life I would rather sing than act in movies, but I go to them every chance I get. Especially the oldies but goodies. Listen, I am planning for my next appearance to do the ‘Hot Voodoo’ number from Blonde Venus when Marlene comes out with the Gorilla suit. Oh, I can’t wait.”
Neither can I.
“I really get a kick out of motion pictures. All kinds of motion pictures. I much prefer movies to the theater but when the theater is brilliant it’s unbeatable. I recently saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream that Peter Brook directed. Oh, it was just everything. Shakespeare didn’t do so badly. I thought of doing Shakespeare but I don’t think I have quite the voice for it. I don’t like to see thin voiced people do Shakespeare. I like to see people who are big. You know. Big voices and big chests and big big magnificence. Off the stage too. I go for flamboyant people. I like people with flash. I like flashy performers and most of my friends are flashy, too. I love Ike and Tina Turner. They have one of the best shows going. And for me they’re a totally theatrical experience. Aretha Franklin is the best singer in the world. I wonder about her head, but she’s the best singer. I would like to see what is happening in music today combined with a theatrical kind of experience. That’s what I’m shooting for. That’s what I’d like to do. Did you see me do “Teenager in Love?”
Her eyes crinkled and sparkled and you knew she was really into what she was talking about.
“In about three years the Fifties are going to come back so big it’s going to be ridiculous. The best things about the Fifties will be back. That’s what’s nice about nostalgia. It takes all the good things and forgets the bad things. Living in it is really a trip, but remembering it is much, much more fun. People who are into it the way I’m into it really giggle about it.
“I’m going to do an album soon and it will have everything on it I love. Mae West and the Andrews Sisters and The Shirelles and Superstar. It’ll be called Out To Lunch.
She jumped up. “Wow. I have to sing for some people in a little while, so excuse me while I change.”
She went into the other room to put on something sort of black (but not quite that basic) and I stood up to leave and stepped in my teacup. On my hands and knees, mopping up the mess with paper towels, I had flashes of Bette Midler in a low-cut Gorilla suit picking pineapple slices out of a kettle drum at the Continental Baths while humming the refrain of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”
