Indiana Gazette
November 18, 1987
NEW YORK (AP) – Bette Midler devised a freewheeling approach to cabaret that influenced the Pointer Sisters, Barry Manilow and others, but she says she longed to be a rock ‘n’roll singer.
“I was a cabaret artist and I was slightly ashamed of it, because in those days, in the early 70s, it was really not the thing to be,” she said in December’s Vanity Pair magazine, released Monday.
“What I really wanted to be was a rocker.”
Her wish came true vicariously when she played a rock singer in the 1979 movie “The Rose.” Despite winning an Oscar nomination for best actress, “after ‘The Rose’ I.didn’t get one job,” she said bitterly. “I couldn’t eat for months … I just couldn’t stop crying.”
Now after her hit movies “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” “Ruthless People,” and “Outrageous Fortune,” she says her life is fabulous.
She has a doting husband, a baby, and a three-picture with Disney Studios.
