A View From a Broad (3 page)

For the Reader
’s
Edification:
Often I am asked how I have managed so consistently to surround myself with people of the highest creative caliber. I offer the following application as but one of the ways in which I uncover talent and excellence that might otherwise lie fallow in the fetid hog wallow that we call the field of entertainment.

BAND APPLICATION

Name_____

Alias_____

Ht_____Wt_____Color of eyes_____

Favorite Female Performer_____

Please answer the following questions:

Will you work for scale? Yes_____No_____

When was the last time you were in jail?_____

Offense and length of term_____

Have you ever physically attacked a performer under whose employ you were at the time? Yes_____No_____

If yes, was it: Onstage_____Offstage_____In the privacy of her home_____

Do you take drugs? Yes_____No_____Not sure_____

Can you arrange for your own supply? Yes_____No_____On occasion_____

Can you arrange for mine? Yes_____No_____On occasion_____

List your major contacts in a. Europe_____b. Australia_____c. Seattle_____

Do you consider your sex drive to be:

Normal_____Above normal_____Monklike_____

In a no-sex situation do you: Play well_____Play badly_____

Quit_____

Have you been able to read this application by yourself? Yes_____No_____Sort of_____

T
here is no rest for the weary. No sooner had the gathering-of-the-forces been accomplished than I had to throw myself into the excruciating process of creating a show that would do two things at one and the same time: a) bring the world to its knees, and b) fit into a footlocker.

Unfortunately, these two objectives were not easily reconciled, and this was causing a severe change in my ordinarily placid, even decorous behavior.

For days on end, I would hardly speak, and when I did only the vilest sort of gibberish would spout forth. I became morose and fat. Unapproachable, except when eating—and then only by waiters. I became, in short, a walking fountain of misery and despair. And not only were my metaphors mixed: my entire thinking process was deranged, and I found myself dwelling, in the
most
morbid fashion, on the very things I had vowed not to think about at all. Every day, for example, I’d get up and stare in total panic at the seven little phrase books hanging so cheerily from my bedpost.

You see, on stage, as in life, I talk
a lot.
In fact, random, rambling raillery makes up a rather large part of my act and I absolutely depend on it. People often say, “My, but the little vixen has a lot of energy,” mostly because I never shut up. But chatter is a respite for me, like treading water after miles of the Australian crawl, and the water that keeps me afloat, the English language. What would I do in, let’s say, Sweden? The few basic
words I was gleaning from my phrase books hardly scratched the surface of my needs. I was, indeed, one scared piece of Divinity.

I began to have recurring nightmares. In one of them, the instant I hit the stage icicles formed on the proscenium arch; snow fell from the flies; and a thick layer of hoarfrost covered the faces of the crowd which lay stretched out before me like the Dead Sea. Frozen to the spot, I could neither sing nor speak nor even cry out as the entire audience rose up as one, pelted me with Eskimo Pies, and walked out.

“I was, indeed, one scared piece of Divinity.”

Yes, I had terrible fears of what
might
happen, but they were as nothing when compared with what really
was
happening.

My new band was crumbling under the pressure of trying to learn a wildly eclectic score from music sheets written in wildly divergent keys, the gift of some sadistic copyist who, I had no doubt, was working for Helen Reddy. Guitar players came and went with a regularity my nerve-racked system could only envy.

My manager had blithely informed me that he would be coming along on the
entire
trip, and suddenly I understood why he had planned the trek in the first place. After all, the most exotic place the man had ever been to was Las Vegas.

My choreographer had, since I last worked with her, turned in her tutus and plunged into Punk. This time out, number after number emerged dripping with violence and hostility. Every day she would come into rehearsal, the tattered threads of what was left of her mental fabric trailing behind her. And there she would sit: back straight, head held high, barking out the steps of the day from her makeshift throne. “
Pas de bourée,
step step;
pas de bourée,
step step;
tour jeté,
step, turn; Katie rip off Linda’s wig!”

We all worked as hard as we could to fulfill her vision, but it didn’t make any difference how we stomped about. We tried to be up-to-the-minute, but it was no use. Invariably, she would sit there, occasionally raising her eyebrows, indicating, with weary little sighs she let escape now and then, that I should quit
while I was ahead and cancel the tour before the rest of the world could plumb for itself the depths of my incompetence.

Still, for all her safety pins, alligator clips, and acute lack of enthusiasm, she
was
a wonderful choreographer, and I loved the way she perceived the world. Once she told me that she had seen Baryshnikov and Kirkland dance
Giselle.
I asked her how it was. “Oh, doll,” she said, “I loved it, but they were
so
brilliant and
so
pompous I was afraid God would strike them down dead.”

How Old Testament of her. Here was a woman who could surprise me. I liked that
and
the extension cords she wore around her neck in her quest for the true Punk pose. But, my dears, I could have used
some
encouragement.

Miss Frank, my dresser and confidante of so many years, was no help either. She would constantly hint—or outright tell me— that it was both foolish
and
dangerous to think I had something the entire world was panting for.

“Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” she would intone while hemming up my skirt or pinning down my cleavage. “There’s a punishment coming. That’s for sure. I can feel it in my bones.”

“That’s polio, dear,” I would tell the silly woman, but to no avail.

THE

•HARLEMETTES•

M
y
three favorite chotchkes on the break of life

Of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised by Miss Frank’s behavior. Miss Frank has always been, and I hope always will be, the very model of humility and moral rectitude. As, indeed, am I, although she does not think so. Being moral isn’t what you
do,
I have often tried to tell her, it’s what you
mean
to do. And, naturally, I always mean the best.

Miss Frank remains unconvinced of my virtue and in deep concern for my immortal soul. I’m sure the only reason she comes along with me on these monumental shleps is because she considers it her duty to save me from the perils that can befall a young woman of my station and bodily proportions. “The road!” Miss Frank proclaims each time we go on tour. “Why, it’s the Devil’s Walkway, and anyone who trods it is bound to Hula in Hell.” Well, what can you do? She’s
such
a good dresser. It must be all those steeples in Boston. But then again, who knows? Certainly not 1.1 know nothing, despite my avid thirst for knowledge and enlightenment. While others study, explore, experience, I go to fittings.

But be that as it may. In those early, dark days of rehearsal, only my new Harlettes—Katie, Franny and Linda—gave me comfort. From the very first moment I discovered them, selling their cherries at the Farmers’ Market, they never let me down. I had to find new background singers for my Grand Tour, because my old ones had decided to find fame and fortune on their own. I was pissed, but not surprised. You know me: Bette Midler, brood hen to the stars—Barry Manilow, Melissa Manchester, the Platform Shoe. And actually, I adored my new threesome. When others turned their backs on this hapless Diva, my Harlettes did what they could to shore me up against the tidal waves of depression that threatened to engulf the vast, cold spaces of Rehearsal Hall 6. For not only were my girls fine singers and dancers, they also thought I was God.

Oh, those girls! My three favorite chotchkes on the breakfront of life! I’ll never forget how they looked when I first saw them— so flushed, so filthy. But I knew, even then, that under those dirt-streaked, rouge-stained cheeks, there was Magic.

The shocking verbal abuse they hurled at me when I first approached them only made me more certain I was right. I could do so much with them, I thought. And
for
them. Duty was not the exclusive province of Miss Frank. I would be more than their employer, I would be their Benefactress. I would raise them out of the gutter, nourish their minds, their souls, be privy to the elevation of their spirits. I would see them become noble and thin . . . God, I love a Mission!