All That Chat
Bette Midler & Marc Shaiman: Behind The Scenes
By: Bi-Coastal
Feb 9, 2026
This past Thursday and Friday, L.A. was graced with two fantastic nights of entertainment. Thursday was Cheyenne Jackson at the Annenberg Center for Performing Arts, and his show was charming, emotional, funny, queer, and an absolute delight. There were many stories, and his songs often capped them and elevated each segment. I assume this was basically the show Jackson did at Carnegie Hall at the end of 2025, so I won’t go into details. But one wonderful surprise was when Jackson brought out Kristen Bell, and they sang the Judy/Barbra “Happy Days/Get Happy” medley. Jackson sang it in a much higher range than Streisand, and I wonder if that adjustment was made because of the difference between Bell’s voice and Judy Garland’s.
Friday brought us Bette Midler interviewing Marc Shaiman about his new book “Never Mind the Happy” and what a blast that was! Midler was visibly sick, coughing occasionally but rallying as one would for a good friend. Shaiman told a lot of stories from the book but also stories that didn’t make the final edit. He was relentless in his jabs at the Motion Picture Academy Museum for providing him with a Casio keyboard and not an actual piano (and those jabs were well deserved). Midler prepared note cards with her questions, many of them about the process. She was as interested in hearing the answers as we were. Shaiman talked a bit about Hairspray, but mainly in the context of Broadway’s changes from when he wrote It to now. Both agreed it just isn’t what it once was. Their party was crashed by Jennifer Lewis (whom Shaiman joked defined the term “stage-starved”), and she sang an extremely funny, very off-color song that Shaiman wrote for her. Shaiman played a recently revised version of “One for My Baby” that he wrote for Midler’s 80th birthday party in an echo of the famous version she sang as Johnny Carson’s final guest. Their segment ran about 50 minutes, followed by a screening of “The First Wives Club”. From start to finish, it was a wonderful evening.
