Painting: Sammy Miro
The Dignified Miss M?
By Connie Bloom
Beacon Journal staff writer
You want trash with flash, sleaze with ease, you got it.
In a decent sort of way.
“Even though I have a foul mouth and had strippers on stage, there’s a line past which I don’t go,” said the Divine Miss M, Bette Midler, 58, looking skinny and blonde and younger than ever.
Got a magnifying glass?
The line was hard to find in the ’70s, when Midler was grappling for fame and was as naughty as she could get without being arrested. Considering the times, she was white-glove proper when she reportedly bounced her bosom out of her bodice to sear her persona and physique-a in the collective memory at Las Vegas’ Sahara Hotel, where she opened for Johnny Carson in 1972. In the post-Woodstock mentality, anything that came in under the rampant nudity radar was par for the course and the mere flashing of one’s charms unremarkable. Besides, she was proud of them.
Rolling Stone characterized the New Yorker’s upstart performances at the Continental Baths in New York as “Fellini fantasies in the flesh” and poked fun at her tawdry get-ups, but rhapsodized on her Big Voice, reminiscent of Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland. Her dulcet tones were said to crawl under the men’s towels and make them feel warm all over. She had a freeing effect on the delighted throngs, an endearing legacy that is uniquely Midler.
“I’ve become a good citizen, raised a beautiful daughter, helped a lot in New York City (working with the New York Restoration Project)….. I’ve achieved a measure of dignity. In life, you’re not supposed to get worse as you grow up…. I’m racy and bawdy but not threatening.”
However she plays it, she is indeed divine. And she’s on the road again, her first tour in four years, and coming to Gund Arena on Monday with a peep show on the shadowy side of carney life in her much anticipated Kiss My Brass Tour. The title is a reference to the incorporation of horns in the band, a first.
No small testament to Midler’s stature, brokers are asking upwards and way upwards of $265 a seat.
“It’s huge, it’s the biggest road show we’ve ever done,” she said from Chicago, where the tour opened in December.
“It’s pretty, too. It’s based on Coney Island at the turn of the century. It was the first time architecture was outlined in light bulbs. The set is very pretty. I was stunned at how beautiful it was. Once we got started, one thing led to another. It’s kind of a festival of the good and the bad of carnival life, the seedy side, the freaks of nature, all in a Bette Midler way.”
Ticket-holders will catch her new look, with straight blonde hair cascading to her shoulders, and check that body! “I AM skinny. I had a lot of people helping me. I’ve been on the South Beach Diet and did very well on it. I highly recommend it. Yes, and I am blonde. Been growing out my hair for a long while. It makes me feel feminine,” she said, skirting commentary about her almost shockingly more youthful appearance.
You know. You’ve seen the cover of her newest release, her 19th album, Bette Midler Sings The Rosemary Clooney Songbook, which went gold in two months, the fastest selling Midler album in years. The project came to fruition practically on a lark, although Midler has always been a Clooney fan.
“Barry (Manilow) called me up in May or April of this year,” she said. “He had a dream we did this project and I said let’s do it. He came in with a CD of all his sketches for the arrangement.
“We worked on it and recorded it in July. I already knew most of the music. It was great being in the studio with him again. He is very articulate…. Rosemary’s son Gabriel came and I felt like I had the blessings of the family…. I am surprised at how the album’s been embraced.”
But why? The Bette Midler touch is reliably golden, the Honolulu-born diva having seared her raucous presence on the pop culture of nearly four decades, reaching beyond concert halls and onto the silver screen with melting agility. As a matter of fact, she has just finished filming The Stepford Wives, a remake of the ’70s cult classic, a dark comedy with Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick and Jon Lovitz, due out in the summer.
Whatever its eventual success (or failure), it it is unlikely to compare with 1979’s The Rose, her favorite, the soulful, gut-wrenching, haunting biopic loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin, sung with raw courage and thermonuclear intensity — unforgettable.
“I did my best work there. It was a time all my dreams were coming true,” she said wistfully. “I still work with those wonderful people. There’s a little bit of The Rose in the show. We have a couple of songs from it, When a Man Loves a Woman and Keep on Rocking. And we have a couple of surprises to go along with it.”
Be still, our syncopated hearts.
