Bette Midler: The Outcast Who's Finally "In"
The Divine Miss M thinks being a bitch as its good points...
Claudia Dreifus

Special thanks to Ronni Jensen for sharing this article 


Bette Midler is sitting in the living room of her crowded Greenwich Village apartment, unwinding after a thirteen hour rehearsal day for her new Broadway production, Clams on the Half Shell Revue. She massages a cramp in a danced-out left leg, complaining of exhaustion. Slumped into her overstuffed, funky red velvet couch, Midler looks a lot more like your second cousin from the Bronx than the pop luminary that she is. No makeup. Pale. Wild orange-red frizz mane clamped back with bobby pins.

Onstage. Bette Midler is a whole other being. Dressed in gold lamé pedal pushers and a black halter corset, her huge breasts shake at her audience - she is "The Divine Miss M," a one-woman personification of camp. Conjuring up pop oldies but goodies from four decades ("trash with flash," she calls her songs), she shimmies her way across the stage, tells bawdy stories, and does routines that summon images of Carmen Miranda and Rita Hayworth. Audiences adore Bette. Tickets for her Broadway production were sold out instantly. Midler's two Atlantic albums of nostalgia music have both sold in the millions.

Not bad for a former chubby, unpopular, unhappy adolescent from Honolulu who came to New York in search of stardom and ended up at Stern's department store selling gloves. After a few bleak years of checking out the flesh markets of the Broadway casting scene, she landed an important part in the play,  Fiddler on the Roof. From there Midler began to appear with her camp act of pop nostalgia at various New York nightspots, the most notable being the Continental Baths, a homosexual hangout famous for having its clientele dress up in towels. But Midler's appeal soon crossed cultural lines: the same act that brought down the towels at the Continental Baths was adored by middle-American audiences. At the age of twenty-nine, Bette Midler is what she's always wanted to be - a full-fledged superstar.

PLAYGIRL: Bette Midler as a child - what was she like?

MIDLER: I was a little chubbier than I am now. I had gigantic tits and I was very plain. I wore harlequin glasses - you know those hideous glasses that ruined a lot of people's lives. I was fairly bright. I had a terrific sense of humor. I was what you would call a go-getter. Mostly I was into theater.

PLAYGIRL: Didn't your mother name you after Bette Davis?

MIDLER: Yes, my mother was very show biz. Not my father. His idea of entertainment is Lawrence Welk. He adores Lawrence Welk. My mother loved television. She used to send us to the movies and she was very particular about the kind. No dramas. No horror movies. As a result, I never saw a horror movie until I was twenty-two years old. My folks, you see, liked hula dancing but not the darker things in life.

PLAYGIRL: I understand you were never permitted to see anything "risqué."

MIDLER: My father was out there painting housing for the navy and he never cared. It was my mother who was into musicals. She would only see a musical or perhaps a Walt Disney adventure.

PLAYGIRL: But your stage act is very bawdy.

MIDLER: Yes. Yes, it is. Isn't it lucky?

PLAYGIRL: Is the bawdiness a reaction to all those happy, sexless musicals?

MIDLER: Well, I guess so. I really like to laugh and I like a dirty joke. I guess that comes from being so cloistered as a child. I was taught to be very good, and my father hated it when I wore eye makeup.

PLAYGIRL: So how did you rebel against all that cheerfulness and goodness?

MIDLER: We lived in this slum in the country outside of Honolulu. I was always fascinated by the local Bad Girls. And we were surrounded by these JD's - juvenile delinquents - and listen, I loved them. I used to follow them even though they wouldn't take me with them or anything. I'd go after them on their adventures like shoplifting. I've always liked that other side of life, you see. 

For instance, on Saturdays, from the time I was six years old to the time I was eighteen, my father would take me and my sister to town to go to the library. My parents would go off shopping at the local John's Bargain Store and my sister and I would either stay in the library or walk around town. When I was young, I would rush in and read all about French courtesans till it was all rushing out of my ears. Later, when I got very brave, I'd go out to the red light district and walk around. All the sailors and people in the armed
forces would go there to see a dirty movie or a bawdy show or to pick up a girl. It was a real red light district and it was so wonderful! It wasn't bullshit Forty-second Street or bullshit Eighth Avenue. It was for real - opium dens and lots of Orientals.

PLAYGIRL: Your parents couldn't have known.

MIDLER: Oh, they never knew. They went out shopping. I never had any misadventures except for one at this movie house when I was thirteen, this guy put the make on me and that was scary. Usually, it was a great thrill for a child to walk around in that environment. You must remember that even though l was in Hawaii, I had a very, very strict lower middle-class Jewish upbringing, so it was quite mind boggling to be in the midst of all this Orientalia - and still be in New Jersey at the same time.

PLAYGIRL: You were an outsider.

MIDLER: Well, first of all, I was white - the Midler's were the only white family for blocks and blocks around. The neighborhood was Hawaiian, Chinese. Japanese, and Samoan, but we were Jewish, which was even weirder. We didn't even have a Christmas tree, which would have made us normal in the eyes of the neighbors. They were all Christians and they had Christmas trees which they decorated to death. No matter how poor a family was, they would scrape together money and give their children the most wonderful Christmases.

I always felt like an outcast. I happened to be the brightest kid in the class, but there was this other white boy - his name was Thomas Golden and I was fascinated with him and he was brilliant. The other kids made mincemeat out of him. There was this dialect you had to speak - pidgin. It's a code and when the Japanese-American children don't want you to know what they're talking about, they talk pidgin. Well, poor old Thomas Golden didn't know how to talk pidgin and he was small and puny, and they picked on him till they destroyed him. That's one reason I don't think I'll ever have any children: they're so damned mean to each other. Children can be meaner than adults because they have no idea of the damage they inflict.

PLAYGIRL: You were an outsider in your high school. too. You didn't fit in.

MIDLER: Yeah. But it was good ... good for the imagination, good for internal life, for character.

PLAYGIRL: You developed fantasies.

MIDLER: Sure. When you're an outcast your imagination works, becomes honed a little sharper. You learn to rely on yourself more. It readies you for what life is really about: life isn't all camaraderie and games.

PLAYGIRL: Recently, you attended your high school reunion. The former outcast coming back as a great success. That must have been interesting.

MIDLER: Yes, it was very strange. I didn't understand why I was there or why they were there. They were fatter, thinner, and older, but they were the same. The relationships were the same. It wasn't that they didn't like me, it was that they didn't know me, didn't know who the hell I was. I had nothing to say to them and after all that time of thinking, of wanting to belong, in the long run, it didn't matter anyway because we had nothing in common.

I've put all that behind me. I used to have only memories about that. But I've been in New York nine years and most of the pain is gone now. I guess it's better to have a miserable childhood and a terrific adulthood than to live the other way around.

PLAYGIRL: How did you finally manage to get out of Honolulu and into your terrific New York adulthood?

MIDLER: I flew. In 1965, I took this money I made as an extra in the movie Hawaii, and I flew to the Coast and from there to New York.

PLAYGIRL: Did Manhattan measure up to your dreams?

MIDLER: I didn't even notice the place. All I saw was a line of theaters: Forty-fourth Street, Forty-fifth Street, Forty-sixth Street. I didn't even know Forty-seventh Street! All I knew was that there were theaters there and real people onstage and that was all I could think of. How did I get in? I just opened my mouth.

PLAYGIRL: What did you feel like when you first started to look for theatrical work?

MIDLER: Like a piece of work. It didn't faze me, though. "Okay," I'd think to myself, ''go ahead, shut the door in my face! Be out to lunch! Hang up on me! I don't care, I'll be back."  I kept looking at all those casting directors and thinking, you should never wear plaid. I was never intimidated by that kind of garbage because I knew I was as good as anything else coming down the pike. I could sing. I could read lines.

PLAYGIRL: When you finally did manage to make it big, it happened because you had become the house singer to the male homosexual community. How did that actually come about?

MIDLER: Because I started at the Continental Baths - I'm up from the tubs, as they say. Gay people love entertainment. That's how they spend their money. They don't care who sits next to them at a show. They just want whoever sits next to them not to care who is sitting next to them, if you know what I mean.

PLAYGIRL: It's strange that you should become a homosexual cult figure. Or is it?

MIDLER: I'm a strong lady - I think they like that. I think they like to see independence. Who knows? Maybe they like the clothes I wear? I think it's more than that, though. It's people - people! Everybody has a little bit of everyone else in them ... a little bit of man, a little bit of woman in them.  

I don't know. Maybe the gays see something in me. Maybe they see that poor schlump from Radford High School just trying to make it through. You know that's a very hard row to hoe, being gay. That's a tough one.

PLAYGIRL: So you think it's your sense of outsidedness that contributes to your popularity?

MIDLER: Absolutely. We're all outsiders. That's the point I'm trying to make. Everyone considers themselves an outsider in one way or another. That's the human condition. It's something you're born with. It's in the genes.

PLAYGIRL: I understand that you once did a television show with your father's idol. Lawrence Welk. How did that work out?

MIDLER: Not too well. It was The Mike Douglas Show. Welk was supposed to dance with me and he wouldn't.

PLAYGIRL: Why not?

MIDLER: Because he thought I was a dirty little girl.

PLAYGIRL: Was he right?

MIDLER: In more ways than one! Maybe he didn't do it consciously. Maybe I just wasn't his type. We were supposed to do this little polka and he immediately went for someone who looked a lot different from the way I looked, even though I certainly can polka as well as Lawrence Welk, God knows! And I remember I used to talk about it in my act because I was quite hurt by it. That happened about four years ago on Mike Douglas. That was the last time I did Mike Douglas and I vowed I would never, never, never appear with them again.

PLAYGIRL: Let's talk about your act. You're really the first female singer / comic since Mae West who has had mass appeal and who's been allowed to be off-color.

MIDLER: I got a lot of inspiration from Mae West. When I first started working, a friend brought one of her records over. It was in the early pot days, you know, when we were all smoking, and everyone was seeing their fantasies come to life.

PLAYGIRL: You don't smoke pot anymore?

MIDLER: Oooooh, it's so bad for your voice! And I have a paranoid fear of death now. So, I hardly do anything except for a few vitamin C tablets now and again. When I smoke all my paranoia comes out. It used to be a real happy experience, but the last couple of years it turned sour. A lot of my friends have found the same thing.

Through it all, Mae West was a source of pleasure . . . I loved her. She was quite marvelous. She was also quite independent, which I liked. So the first time I worked on television I did one of her songs. ''Come Up and See Me Sometime. After awhile, I stopped doing her. Two years later, I got a letter from her lawyers asking me to "cease and desist." I would have thought Mae West would have gotten a real kick out of it.

PLAYGIRL: You're often compared to Barbra Streisand. Does that please you?

MIDLER: I'm not compared to Barbra Streisand, am I? Maybe I am. I don't sing like her too much. She has the voice of death. I mean, she has hundreds of octaves and cleaaar, beeellllshaaapped, rooouund, peaaarshaaaped tones. And I'm just a shouter, really.

PLAYGIRL: So you resent the comparison?

MIDLER: Actually, I find it flattering. Streisand's brilliant. Why shouldn't I like that?

What is mind boggling though, is to find people doing impressions of me!
And the strangest thing of all is to see a drag queen, a transvestite, doing me.

PLAYGIRL: What was it like for you the last time you saw a female impersonator doing Bette Midler?

MIDLER: I was hurt because I didn't think the impression was accurate. It was very crude - he was doing my lines, but he didn't get any of the jokes right and he missed all of my punch lines. He came out with these two guys and he called them some half-funny name like the Studettes - it was meant to be a play on the Harlettes, my back-up group of female singers arid dancers. Well. I would never work with men. Never. Never.

PLAYGIRL: You were hurt because this female impersonator wasn't respecting your professionalism, was that it?

MIDLER: That upset me. And then, it was so mindless. It was a performance of hysteria. It had a lot of shaking and screaming, but it had no center. I've always felt that no matter how broad my performance was, that I always had it under control. This was all on one level. To me, it seemed like he was saying I was lousy. But that's my paranoia. I should have just said: 'Well, he's inaccurate!''

PLAYGIRL: You mentioned that you wouldn't work with men on stage.

MIDLER: I meant male dancers. I'd work with male singers. Mostly I won't work with male dancers because I like the strength of a lot of women on stage. When you see a lot of women on stage the "woman thing" is accentuated, thrust out at you, quadrupled. If you're working with three women, there are three images of what you are. When you work with males, you cut all that femaleness down.

PLAYGIRL: You put on a very optimistic show. Your theme song "Friends," for instance, is all about how people should have lots of friends. Is the positivism of your performance deliberate?

MIDLER: I know this sounds corny, but people are so bored and so weary and they have such a lot of trouble. I mean, every day you've got to get up, you've got to put your socks on, you've got to wear shoes because there's dogshit in the streets, and I just want them to sigh and push on ahead. I'm not a terrifically deep thinker, but I do know that happiness and joy are medicinal.

PLAYGIRL: Where do you get your music? Your albums are so eclectic - you sing everything from Kurt Weill to the Andrews Sisters to the stuff you call low-rent rock.

MIDLER: I find my songs by reading. I read song sheets like literature. Sometimes, I pick 'em by titles, like "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." You see, I always liked the Andrews Sisters, but I'd never heard this song before. So one time, this guy, an actor from the Second City came up to me and said: "You know,
you should look into 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." I just fell down and laughed because of the alliteration but I went right out the next day and hunted it down. And sure enough, it was this terrific, wonderful song.

PLAYGIRL: What do you read besides sheet music?

MIDLER: A lot of crap. For instance, I've just read Rona Barrett's autobiography. She's cuckoo. She's bananas. But hers is a wonderful story. I'm also reading Colette. And I've just started reading newspapers again. For the last year, I only read the Watergate trials.

PLAYGIRL: What did you think of it all?

MIDLER: I was most amused. It was amazing they could unravel it. I have no idea what really happened, but I don't think the truth is out yet - just like I don't think the truth is out where Jack Kennedy is concerned ... or Bobby Kennedy. I don't think we know anything. That's why I keep trying to give audiences a little happiness because I know they don't know shit and they never will and it's just as well.

PLAYGIRL: "Just as well." Why do you say that?

MIDLER: Because it's just as well. Even if they did know, there'd be nothing they could do about it. It's so big, so gigantic.

PLAYGIRL: What about the women's movement? Do you relate to it at all? I remember seeing you on the Kupcinet show some years back. You were on with Betty Friedan and some rather antifeminist actress, and I thought you defended the ideas of the movement well.

MIDLER: I take a lot of pride in being a woman, but I take a sort of "quiet" pride. The Equal Rights Amendment ought to be passed. I can't see any reason why the various state legislatures won't. It's so stupid not to. But then, I don't govern the country. I just pay my income taxes.

PLAYGIRL: Is there anything about the women's movement that relates in a special way to your own life?

MIDLER: No, not a whole lot. I try to help my girlfriends out. Mostly, I'm trying to get out of that woman's thing of cutting other women down. That I don't want to do anymore. I am a bitch. I'm a bitch in the sense that I like the wonderful things about being a bitch, but not the negative things. When I say bitch, I mean being on top of it, being aware and knowing the answers. I like that part. But I don't like doing it at the expense of other women. I don't like to sit around and dish the dirt with the girls.

PLAYGIRL: I must admit I've heard show biz rumors that you're quite a bitch to work with. Do you find that people put you down because you are one of those rare females who actually does have some authority? Could it be that you're called a bitch because you have the guts to exercise your authority?

MIDLER: Yeah, but I don't think of it in terms of being a woman. I think of it in terms of do I know what I'm talking about or do I not know what I'm talking about? If I do know, then it doesn't matter if I'm a man or a woman. I have to know what I'm doing. If I don't, I'm going to get shit upon no matter what.

PLAYGIRL: On your last album, Bette Midler, you sang a new version of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released." What fascinated me about your arrangement of the song was that you gave the lyrics a feminist angle. Instead of singing, "They Say Every Man Needs Protection ...," you sing, "They Say Every Woman Needs Protection ...," and the thing is that you sing that all in a very ironic manner. Were you deliberately turning Dylan into a feminist statement?

MIDLER: Yeah. I heard the song and thought: "Well, I know what that means." And I sang it that way because to me it meant that I, as a human being, have been trapped, that I don't want to be anymore. To me, that song is almost like a mystery. It absolutely is my Woman's Song. It's my "I'll-get-out-from-under" song. But you know, "I Shall Be Released" is a man's song originally. And men have the same troubles. The song was written by a man and here he is, in the same predicament; he's just as much in pain as any woman singing the song. So what are you going to say except that it's the human condition to be in pain and to express it?

PLAYGIRL: You took your first vacation from work in nine years recently. What impelled you?

MIDLER: I think part of the reason I took a year off is because I really wanted a chance to grow up and out of the pain I had as a kid. I traveled, listened to music, met people. I did the things people do when they finally have a little time - not the things I should have done, though, because I'm really a shy person. I went off by myself and was sometimes too shy to leave the hotel.

PLAYGIRL: Were you afraid of being recognized?

MIDLER: No. No. I was afraid of not being recognized - even as a human being. It's one of the things that people who are alone have, the joy of being alone and being able to entertain yourself, and then the fear of when you want to find someone or you want to be with a group, the fear of not being able to find someone or not being able to fit into a group.

PLAYGIRL: In those kinds of situations do you ever feel: "Hey, I'm Bette Midler, I ought to be finding someone?"

MIDLER: Never. I'm not that way. I don't have any of that ego thing - that people are supposed to like me because I'm Bette Midler, that people are supposed to love me and take me to bed and just kiss my ass because of who I am.

PLAYGIRL: Do you ever find that straight men have a hard time relating to you socially because of your gay following?

MIDLER: Not in the least! If a man is secure and feels terrific or else just really wants to know me - even if he's a mess - then he'll come to know me. I don't have any trouble with straight men.

PLAYGIRL: What kind of men interest you ?

MIDLER: Men that aren't scared of me but, on the other hand, men that don't intimidate me. I hate being intimidated by a man. You know what kind of men I like? Men who make me laugh, amusing men, men who like to be amused by me, men who like to see me be the Silliest Thing.

PLAYGIRL: Let's switch from men to children. Earlier you said you didn't want to have children because you felt children were cruel. Do you think you'd have a cruel child?

MIDLER: That's a chance you take, a chance I wouldn't want to take. There are too many mean, miserable human beings already. I'm mean, myself, I have a big mean streak in me. Babies are terrific, but there's a certain age a child reaches when all that meanness comes out.

PLAYGIRL: So you've made a conscious decision on that.

MIDLER: Absolutely. I don't have a particular maternal instinct. I have other instincts - my work, what I consider, "my art." Maybe it all goes into my work. The responsibility of parenthood is huge and I'm terrifically irresponsible. I'm not going to apologize for it. W.C. Fields hated children too.

PLAYGIRL: What about that other traditional institution, marriage?

MIDLER: That, also, is not an easy row to hoe. I've seen a lot of unhappy marriages. What seems to happen in good marriages is that people become one with each other, and I don't know how to do that. I haven't met anybody that allows me to go so deeply into them that l am them. I've not allowed anyone to come so deeply into me that they are me.

PLAYGIRL: What about your friend and manager, Aaron Russo?

MIDLER: What kind of a friend? You mean, he's my lover. He has been my lover. He will be my lover. We've been lovers. The relationship is changing all the time. We're both very fiery people. We like each other a lot. We're very good friends, that's what it is. And we have an understanding. But are we going to get married? No! we're not.

PLAYGIRL: Why?

MIDLER: I don't want to get married. I'm having too much fun. He gives me my own head. He doesn't bother me. I go out with whom I please. I see him when I please. He sees me when he pleases. We're very moderne. It's an open-ended relationship.

PLAYGIRL: What about money? Looking around your apartment, I'd call it student-style, rather humble for a superstar. What are you doing with all your money?

MIDLER: I live splendidly! This place is really beautiful except that I'm working right now and it's a bit messy.

PLAYGIRL: Do you feel rich?

MIDLER: I felt rich when I was in Paris and was spending so much. I'm afraid to spend, because I come from all that poverty. It's very difficult to lose that fear. I mean, the only person I ever saw lose all that fear in two minutes was Elton John. Oh, David Bowie's another one.

PLAYGIRL: I read in an article somewhere that everyone loves Bette Midler. Does Bette Midler love Bette Midler?

MIDLER: Not all the time. No. In the morning, no. First of all, her hair stands up straight on end when she has to get out of bed. And she has to wear flannel pajamas because she has no blood and because she comes from the tropics. And, she has to wear socks. And, she has to turn the electric blanket up. Then, when she's turned the electric blanket up, she can't get out of bed because she thinks she's in her mother's womb. So in the morning, Bette has a lot of trouble. But once she's out of bed and has combed her hair, she's fine.

PLAYGIRL: Once you've done all that, do you ever look back on Bette Midler the lonely outcast from Honolulu and think: "Hey, I'm what I always imagined I'd be?"

MIDLER: No, I never imagined I'd be this, ever. I knew I'd be wonderful, but I didn't know I'd be this wonderful. Actually, I'm very happy with myself. Back in high school, I used to envy the people who rejected me, but there were always great compensations to being who I was. I was always laughing ... and there's no better feeling - aside from sex or maybe the peace that comes from having found God - than laughing.

PLAYGIRL: Have you found God yet? 

MIDLER: No. But I'm still laughing.