Hutchinson News
June 22, 1986
Stars squabble over billing
Both Bette Midler and Shelley Long have equal star billing in the forthcoming Disney movie “Outrageous Fortune,” and it’s causing outrageous headaches. Each insisted her name go first in publicity releases. To compromise, the Disney public relations department sends one out with Bette leading the way, in the next one Shelley has her name first.
There’s a precedent for this. Back in 1947 William Powell and Irene Dunne, starring in “Life With Father,” demanded and got alternate billing in everything – the ads, the marquees and even alternate billing in the screen credits of the film itself.
