Quips And Quotes 9
Bette Midler On Getting Revenge: “When I was young I caught my boyfriend in flagrante delicto. “I was in a Jaguar, like a tank, and he had his mother’s car. I rammed the end of his car with my Jaguar. I was so happy and he was really upset because he didn’t have any insurance. I had tons of insurance.” (Daily Record, Sept.25, 1996)
Bette Midler On Getting Revenge: “I think revenge is really good for the soul. If you are really wronged, I think revenge is biblical. We all know about turning the other cheek and all that, but I think it’s part of human nature to want to take revenge if you really have been wronged. And you don’t have to worry about it. People always say, `Ah, they had it coming to them.’ Everybody does that.” (Daily Record, Sept.25, 1996)
Bette Midler On Her First Wive’s Club Co-Stars: “We had a good time, I can tell you! Diane, Goldie and I turned 50 within the same month. There is something to be said for three women the same age, sticking together! It was like being back in high school again. It was hilarious. We really, really laughed because we have so much in common.” (Daily Record, Sept.25, 1996)
Bette Midler On Her Sassy, Brassy Image: “I just play angry women very well. I personally don’t have anything to be angry about, I’m really a very happy woman.” (Daily Record, Sept.25, 1996)
Bette Midler On Her Marriage To Martin von Haselberg: “My marriage is going along like a marriage. It’s a marriage. We’re not a revengeful couple. We’re actually rather civil to each other, we’re very decent. The star added: “It’s hard, it’s a lot of give and take. But he’s never done anything to me that would make me want to murder him. I’m not so sure he hasn’t wanted to murder me once or twice, but I’m still standing, so I think everything must be okay.” (Daily Record, Sept.25, 1996)
Bette Midler On Moving Back To New York: “I came back to New York after the earthquake. Tough town. I still have my shows, I still have lots of songs to sing. I think I’m going to do something with HBO. At least, I hope so.” (Daily Record, Sept.25, 1996)
Bette Midler On Doing Another Tour Post Experience The Divine: “I may or may not go on tour. I’d like to put something together that’s a little bit smaller so I can get to Europe. I haven’t been to Europe since 1979. It’s prohibitive to go there. The last time I worked I had 60 people and I can’t travel with 60 people. I wouldn’t make any money. I wouldn’t even break even. So, if I could get something a little smaller, I would love to go because I really do love to go to Europe. I love the people, I love everything, the food, the landscape.” (Daily Record, Sept.25, 1996)
Bette Midler On Marruage And Divorce: “You know what I think, too many people have unrealistic expectations about life and marriage is a tough road. If you think anything else then it’s a big mistake. I think the tough thing about divorce is the effect on the kids. It can be devastating. A lot never recover from it. I would never do that to a child,. I don’t see how people can.” (Daily Record, Sept.25, 1996)
Bette Midler On Movies: “I would have liked to have made a really great picture. The last picture that really told me something about the human condition as maybe `The Godfather’, ” she says. I also liked `The Birdcage’, it was sweet.” (Daily Record, Sept.25, 1996)
Bette Midler On Society: “There’s too much emphasis on youth and beauty today, she maintains. What else is there – there’s youth, beauty, drugs and sex. The truth is there’s the real world and the world the media project on to the real world, which is not the real world. But some people see that as the real world and because they’re not part of it, they feel they’re missing out. It’s an illusion but they’re sucked up into it. If you allow yourself to be manipulated by these images then you’ll be disappointed because it’s not possible to live that life.” (Daily Record, Sept.25, 1996)
Bette Midler On Hollywood’s Emphasis On Youth And Beauty: “The movies are guilty of this as well. That’s why I don’t go to many films anymore. I don’t like what the industry is selling. For the most part the Hollywood studio products have as much nutrition as cotton candy. They’re like a McDonald’s burger.” (Daily Record, Sept.25, 1996)
Bette Midler On Hesitancy To Tell Sophie About Her Past: “I’ve really protected Sophie a lot. Maybe too much. We don’t watch TV and she doesn’t hear the news. I’ve never told her about the Baths or about gay people – I’ve never told her about anything. I have to decide how I’m going to say all of it. It could take me years. `And what part did you play mom?’ Well, it was like this …” (Daily Record, Sept.25, 1996)
Bette Midler On Diva Las Vegas:Â “This show had me pretty winded, and I was surprised. I thought I had more stamina than that, but I had to build up to it. It really does take the vinegar out of you.” (Santa Ana Orange County Register January 12, 1997)
Bette Midler On Performing: “I’ve been performing so long, I just do what I feel like doing. I can’t second-guess the crowd, so I do what pleases me; if they find that eccentric or whatever, that’s their problem, not mine. For the most part, I do what amuses me and I think I’ve only been just outside the line of what is considered absolutely ‘acceptable.’ I mean, I’ve never pierced my navel, and my lips are all my own. I feel I’m pretty much mainstream now, in contrast to what else is out there. I think that’s a function of age. People try to push the envelope and see how far they can go, but when you get a little older, that suddenly becomes unimportant.” ((Santa Ana Orange County Register January 12, 1997)
Bette Midler On Making It In Show Business:Â “Trust your talent. You don’t have to make a whore of yourself to get ahead. You really don’t.” (2014)
Bette Midler On Cher:Â “Cher can go on forever–her career is larger than God so far,” (2015)
Bette Midler On Alice Cooper: Â “Alice is so super keen. One of these days I’m gonna get him to twitch my knockers.” (1973)
Bette Midler On Lonliness: “I’ve been lonely most of my life. I think most people are lonely. What can you do about it? I sing about it. And it’s not over either ”“ it’s not over till you die”¦” (The Toronto Star, February 24, 1973)
Bette Midler On Growing Up In Hawaii: “Here I was, white, in this Samoan neighborhood, always different, terrified of physical violence, made to feel afraid, unattractive. But I used to wander the old red light district. The tacky part of town. And it looked very romantic and passionate to me, so alive. See even then I was always fascinated by the bad girls. It seemed like the bad girls always had the most fun.” (The Toronto Star, February 24, 1973)
Bette Midler On Seeing The “Theater Of The Ridiculousness”:  “I remember one girl came out as Waterfront Woman ”“ you know, from the Josef von Sternberg movies, all in shadows except the face? His women were so mysterious, always getting on boats or disappearing on docks into the fog. Oh I just fell in love with those images. I saw that show and I just went out shopping the next day. At the end of two weeks I was Waterfront Woman. I remember the first dress I bought ”“ it was red velvet floor length, cost me $5. But it didn’t fit so I had to hike it up in back with a brooch. Oh I just climbed into it right away.” (The Toronto Star, February 24, 1973)
On The Baths: “Oh, they loved me at the tubs, they really encouraged me,” she says fondly. “They allowed me to act out the whole dream, all those fantasies, all the people I wished I was”¦” (The Toronto Star, February 24, 1973)
On What Bette Midler Would Like Out Of Stardom: “I would like to be loved the way Charlie Chaplin was loved.” She looks up at the tinfoil portrait of the Little Tramp over her mantel, “I guess that’s what makes you perform. It’s like that constant search for all that affection and attention that you never had when you were young.” (The Toronto Star, February 24, 1973)
Bette Midler On Being Just A Fad:  “I’m not a freaky fad,” she says angrily. “What I do may be, but I’m not. If this doesn’t go, I’ll just find something else. I have stories to tell, characters I have to be. I’m not afraid. See, there was a time when I was so afraid cause I loved it so much”“the music, the characters, the clothes ”“ afraid that it wouldn’t turn out right. I was afraid, not that people would make fun of it, but that they just would not pay any attention ”“ which is worse. Cause, see, I made it up. I put everything into it. It’s my whole life”¦”  (The Toronto Star, February 24, 1973)
On What Bette Midler Wants To Accomplish: “I want to do it all. Everything.” She flings her arms wide at the TV camera in her best doomed grand dame voice, “I want to live fast, die hard, live hard, die young, leave a brilliant memory.” (The Toronto Star, February 24, 1973)
Bette Midler On The Andrews Sisters: “Those girls were so together they could raise their eyebrows in unison,” (The National Observer, March 3, 1973)
Bette Midler On The Seventies: “The Seventies is a time for re-evaluation. Everybody is coming out of the fabulous Sixties and they’re just exhausted. Most people are sad and they don’t know why.” (The National Observer, March 3, 1973)
Bette Midler On Her Antitdote For Sadness Circa The Seventies: “I tend to go for funky music. I haven’t done Jo Stafford yet, but I will someday. I love Patti Page and her `Old Cape Cod,’ but I only do it when I’m in the Cape Cod area.” (The National Observer, March 3, 1973)
Bette Midler On Her Antitdote For Sadness Circa The Seventies:  “I love Teresa Brewer. Actually, ‘Wheel of Fortune’ was instrumental in setting me in my path. I attended The Ridiculous Theatrical Company once in the late 1960s and there was this girl in the cast. They had all these fanciful names and hers was Blackeyed Susan. She was kind of a running-gag character. In one part she was a hooker on the docks, and she came out and recited this endless Robert Service poem that made no sense at all. Then in this 1930s number she came out wrapped in toilet paper with dollar bills taped to her. She was the Statue of Liberty and she sang ‘Wheel of Fortune’.”  (The National Observer, March 3, 1973)
Bette Midler On Growing Up In Honolulu: “I grew up in Honolulu. My father came there before the war and then after it was over he had three kids so he didn’t leave. They’re weeeeird, my parents. Thirty years in Hawaii and it’s like they’re still in New Jersey. In grammar school, I was the only white kid in my class. I was always getting unexcused absences for the Jewish holidays. It used to freak me out. I was afraid of people. In a pinch, I could be aggressive with people but I always worried what they thought of me. It was hard. But thennnn ”¦. she makes a mockdramatic flourish with the garlic knife,”. I came into my glory in high school. I bullosssomed. I blossomed into a D-cup and there were finally white kids in my school. I was even popular. It was a real surprise because before that I had always been left out. In high school I became a person. That was when I began to realize I wasn’t as bad as I thought. Those were happy times, which is why I like the early ’60s music so much-especially the girl groups, like the Shan-Gri-Las. Oh, they were tuffff, huhnee, weren’t they?” (Modern Hi-Fi & Stereo Guide, June 1973)
Bette Midler On Being Brought Up Self Sufficient: “I was never taught that little girls should be soft and passive. It was only later, when I grew up, that I found out they were supposed to be, and by then I knew it was all bullshit anyway. See, my father always wanted a boy, and instead he got three daughters and a retarded son. So it sorta freaked him out and he decided to make his girls as self-sufficient and independent as boys. We were taught survival early. I mean, they never gave us a dime. Whatever money we ever had, we always worked for.” (Modern Hi-Fi & Stereo Guide, June 1973)
Bette Midler On Being Brought Up Self Sufficient: “That’s why coming to New York was so easy for me. I felt I understood New York before I even came. I did a year of college at the University of Hawaii, but it wasn’t going fast enough. I had a bit part in the movie Hawaii, and I saved $3,000 from it. I am reeeeealy Jewish about money. With those $3,000 I came to New York to be in the theater.” (Modern Hi-Fi & Stereo Guide, June 1973)
Bette Midler On Her First New York Home: “There was a hole in my bed and I was always falling through it at night. And the bathroom was down the hall. And I mean really down the hall. You had to get dressed, go out the door, turn right, turn left, turn right again. It was your basic freak scene, that hotel. Winos in the hall ”¦whores in the next room ”¦junkies outside. The dyke bar was downstairs and the gay bar was down the street.” Bette bites into a carrot to punctuate her ecstacy: “I loved it! My dear it was my great adventure. So exciting! No, seriously, I got used to it. It became just another trip down life’s merry road.” (Modern Hi-Fi & Stereo Guide, June 1973)
Bette Midler On Her Try Outs For Fiddler: “First they said I was too Jewish, then they said I’m not Jewish enough. This went on for eight months, finally, I got the role. But the whole experience represented my introduction to the true Broadway system. From then on, it was a series of rude awakenings. What I had thought it was gonna be like ”“ legitimate theater ”“ turned out to be nothing of the sort. I mean, the superficiality, the trappings were the same, but the bone and marrow . . . it was cheap, dirty, full of politicking. At the end of my second year with the show, I knew I had to get out.”  (Modern Hi-Fi & Stereo Guide, June 1973)
Bette Midler On When She Knew She’d Be A Singer:  “I was going out with a guy who really loved music. He used to play things for me, things I had never heard before. He turned me on to “Unforgetable,” one of Aretha Franklin’s earliest albums ”“ a sort of tribute to Dinah Washington. When I listened to it, she was talking right to me. That’s the essence of art, yunno ”“ when someone can communicate like that. It affects you. You may forget the details, but you don’t forget the essence. Anyway, I was over at Ben’s house one night listening to that album and I was ripped ”“ rippedripped! Really stoned. I started singing at the top of my lungs. Finally, at the end of the evening, I said, ”˜I’m going to be a singer.’  (Modern Hi-Fi & Stereo Guide, June 1973)
Bette Midler On What She Needed To Become A Singer: “I had a girlfriend, Marta Heflin. She was in ”˜Fiddler’ with me but she wanted to be a nightclub singer. After the show every night she would go down to all the showcases in town and try out her material. I went with her a couple of times to see what it was all about. One night, at Hilly’s on Ninth St. . . . good old Hilly’s . . . I got up and sang. I sang “God Bless The Child.” Something happened to me when I was singing that song. It was really weird. It was a physical thing, and a very emotional thing, too. It was just what I needed to help me decide on becoming a singer. So I started doing the showcases. I was singing ballads and torch songs, ’cause that’s what I had the greatest affinity for. Then I got into my black music passion.”  (Modern Hi-Fi & Stereo Guide, June 1973)
Bette Midler On Her Helen Morgan Phase: “I saw this picture of Helen Morgan on the cover of one of her albums. She looked so ”¦ so lost. She wore a long velvet gown and held a glass in one hand. The image was terrifically romantic. It appealed to me. So I went out and bought a black velvet gown with beaded sleeves from a junk store around the corner. Ten dollars, and it’s still the most beautiful thing in my closet. I really got into the costume thing ”“ the whole image. It was like being bitten by a fever. I just couldn’t stay away from it. After ”˜Fiddler’ every night, I’d put on my face, do my hair, put on my costumes and take the subway down to Hilly’s or The Apartment or the Improv and then I’d be up on stage. Oh, was I weeeeird, honey! A silk scarf in one hand, a glass of booze in the other. I was getting into all my heavyweight fantasies. I mean, dahling, me and Miss Marleeena Dietrich!” She crinkles her nose in glee. “I loved it.” (Modern Hi-Fi & Stereo Guide, June 1973)
Bette Midler On Her Face: “I have a strange face,” she says, matter of-factly, “and no one ever let me forget it most of my life. It’s painful, I guess. I mean, it really used to hurt, but it does build your character. You’re not as lazy as you might be if you were beautiful. Who was it that said ”˜Beauty is only skin deep’? The Temptations. Well, really, who would want it any deeper, yunno? Unless you’re a cannibal”¦!”  (Modern Hi-Fi & Stereo Guide, June 1973)
Bette Midler On Her Early Years In New York City: “I was very anxious to get to the city (New York). I didn’t notice that there was anything wrong with it. The first month that I was here was when they had the blackout. I thought it was fabulous.  And, right after that, in January, the subway went on strike. And I was living down here and I had to go up to 119th Street to get to work every day. I was working at Columbia University ”“ typing. So it was like this incredible hassle. But I just thought it was a lark.  The first four years I was here (in New York) I thought the city was just unbelievable, but now I’m getting a little tired. It’s hard on an older person. I mean if you’re not 19 you might as well forget it.”  (Zoo World, October 25, 1973)
What Bette Midler, The Rock Goddess, Wants To Be: “What I want is to be a bisexual fantasy. I want to be the most loved, the most desired woman on this earth.”  (Zoo World, October 25, 1973)