Lee Grant: Times
The talent was everywhere. 

Vilmos Zsigmond, the cinematographer who earned an Academy Award for "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," brought in Oscar winners Haskell Wexler ("Bound for Glory") and Conrad Hall ("Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid") and other craftsmen for this day. 

Robert Wolfe, the Oscar-winning film editor of "All the President's Men." was on hand with producer Marvin Worth ("Lenny"). Director Mark Rydell ("Cinderella Liberty") was standing on stage before a band of top rock musicians. 

Toni Basil, the creative dancer and vivid actress, was surveying the scene choreographically.  Theoni V. Aldredge, the costume designer whose clothes for "The Great Gatsby'' won her an Oscar, took a seat down front. 

It was Friday afternoon at the old Wiltern Theater on Wilshire and Western and this group had been gathered to film a concert sequence for "The Rose,” the motion picture debut of Bette Midler, the extraordinary entertainer. 

For the movie, Miss Midler is shedding the demeanor of "The Divine Miss M," the tacky persona of "trash with class."  She plays here a blues-rock singer of the late 1960s carved in the image of Janis Joplin (the name "Rose" a synonym perhaps for Miss Joplin's "Pearl") and views this undertaking as a responsibility to all the performers of that psychedelic era (Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison of the Doors included) who burned themselves out with a combination of drugs, liquor and an inability to cope with life offstage. 
 

CONCERT HALL: Midler was to sing hard rock 'n' roll and the Wiltern had been appropriately turned into a New York concert hall setting.  There was a light show, a mammoth bank of speakers flanking the stage and extras in the audience wearing beads, headbands and flashing the "V" sign.  This was not a day for her regular material like "Friends" or "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B." 

Also in the house (where "American Hot Wax" photographed its show scenes, too) were a few hundred persons who bought tickets to participate as part of the audience, the money going to charity.  Others would come to an evening filming. (Another concert sequence will be made the night of July 14 at East Los Angeles College Stadium, the public invited to that for $2.) 

The movie is budgeted at about $8 million and guided for 20th Century-Fox by Worth and coproducer Aaron Russo, the man who took Miss Midler from the Continental Baths in New York to the big time.  Chewing bubble gum, drinking a Tab, wearing cut-off Levi's and a T-shirt that didn't quite cover his ample girth, Russo was omnipresent.  A voice from the crowd: "Aaron, I love your legs. Call me Thursday." 

Rydell, an excellent actor (“The Long Goodbye") who as a director most recently came off the disappointing "Harry and Waiter Go to New York," delivered a message to the audience:  “Welcome to ‘The Rose' and 1969 rock 'n' roll. You look sensational. We are going to photograph you, so stay vital, slay alive. You're all here. I know, because you dig her and we all do too. There will he lots of cameras working (seven) and lots of difficult things to achieve.  And don't forget to call her 'The Rose.' Not ‘Bette.’''' 

Plastic red and pink roses were distributed and soon the lights dimmed, the excitement and tension peaked, a few shrieked and an assistant director said, "You do whatever you want, jump up, jump down, bananas: remember, we want bananas."
 

PERFORMANCE:  Miss Midler appeared, flashes popped and the crowd surged, standing on seats, roaring, clapping over their heads, bellowing, "Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose."  She jumped at the microphone, twirling, moving about. "Hello, mothers" (actually a little stronger word than that), and the song was "Midnight in Memphis." 

She teased, pushed her hair up, waved at the balcony, took a swig from a bottle labeled Southern Comfort (Miss Joplin's drink).  A rose was thrown; she threw it back: "Hello, New York. How you doin'?  Damn, how much speed did you take?  Mama feels great tonight - and I look great, don't I? (Applause.) You know how I keep this old, battered body in shape?  Drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll: drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll . . . "
 

BLUES AND BOOZE:  A break while the cameras reloaded and Miss Midler chatted with the audience: "I'd like to say hello as a human being.  We've been on the project for eight weeks and it's been the most fun of my life. This is the first time I've ever done a film and I want to thank you for being part of it.'' 

Producer Worth listened. "A big, big talent," he said.  "She's trying difficult things, getting into this character and losing Bette.  She is idealistic and feels a responsibility to the time.  It's not a rip-off movie to her.  She is very respectful to those people." 

Rydell then took the microphone and told the assembled, "Get yourself really stoked again." 

The band started in, one more time for "Midnight in Memphis," another dug of Southern Comfort (actually water) and some suggestive moves with the musicians. 

Someone in the audience handed her a container: "Well, look what they gave to Mama - three Speckled Birds (a drug), a bottle of Dexies, purple hearts and a pill I don't have any idea what it is."  She popped it, said, "What the hell?'' and followed with another shot of booze. 

The next tune was "Fire Down Below." a rough, sexy blues number. The highlight came, however, with a version of the old Percy Sledge song, "When a Man Loves a Woman."  Midler introduced it this way: "People say to me, Rose, when was the first time you heard the blues? And I always say, ‘Honey, the day I was born.’  And I'll tell you why - because I'm a woman.  And what is a woman but a waitress at the banquet of life.  We all want a little love and affection but what do you do when your man comes home smelling of beer and other women, a scent I can detect at 500 paces?" 

She sang it with emotion, heart, depth, arms pleading, voice shaking, the microphone a crutch, the audience stunned: "When a man loves a woman, can’t keep his mind on nothin' else." 

Joplin would have liked it.