A View From a Broad (6 page)
Read A View From a Broad Online
Authors: Bette Midler
Tags: #Actress, #Biography & Autobiography, #Entertainment & Performing Arts, #Movie Star, #Nonfiction, #Performing Arts, #Retail
And that’s the part of The Magic Lady I find the most difficult to relate to: her optimism, in the face of everything. Her
enthusiasm,
which survives and survives and survives. Yet that I know is what makes her magic—and that’s the part I most admire.
In any event, my masks gave me something to think about as I remained encased in my mustardy grave, my only link with life Miss Frank, who would occasionally pass Fritos and small pieces of cheese through the mouthpiece so that I might keep up my strength.
As I saw the shadows lengthen across the floor, I thought, Is this how it’s going to end after all?
Headlines flashed before my eyes:
Began Career at Continental Baths
But I have always been a lucky girl, at least when it comes to survival, and, in time, my hairdresser returned. While Miss Frank held a flashlight inside the wiener, he snipped and cut and snipped again, until, at last, I was free.
I would love to say that as I stepped out of the hot dog a giant cheer went up. But except for the girls and Miss Frank, everyone had gone.
Oh, well, I thought, that’s show biz.
Dear Sis: First of all, STOP whatever you’re doing and try and concentrate for five minutes. When I spoke to you last night I got the definite feeling that in typical Midler fashion your
MIND WAS WANDERING.
So here it is all written down just in case you forget.
No. 1: The turntable I ordered for Daniel should be arriving in New York in a few days. Please pick it up and send it to him right away. It’s his going-away present. Mom and Pop’s present I’m sending from here—my maid, Aretha. Aretha and Mama should get along famously—they “both hate to clean.
I never understood why it’s the people who go away who get the goodies. It’s the ones left behind that need cheering up. So I decided to give everyone going-away presents. Write a nice little note to Daniel, will ya? Tell him I miss him and love him and try to explain what I’m doing—as if I knew.
No. 2: Go to Bloomingdale’s—third floor. Walk past all the Ultrasuede. Continue on through Junior Miss past all the beauty-hint books by Continental ladies of dubious titles, no matter what vegetable they are suggesting you smear on your face. Just past the book stand you will see a small barred window marked
GIFT WRAPPING
. Sitting behind the bars there will be a remarkably ill-tempered young man remarkably misnamed Mr. Merth, who will, if you state your name clearly and in no way disturb his day, present you with a large box containing
your
going-away present. And you’d better like it, bitch. Right now I need all the encouragement I can get.
I wish you could leave your class in the hands of a sub for a few days and come to London. I asked Mom and Pop, but I think the trip was just too much for them. You know my manager wants me to end the tour in Hawaii. He thinks it would make great copy to end where I began, etc. etc. But I don’t really want to do it. I mean if a prophet is without honor in his own country, what about a loudmouth like me? I’m always afraid Mrs. Burke will suddenly appear, and picking me up by the back of the neck like some great tabby, announce to one and all,
“This hussy is a fraud!”
In any event, I must be off and slogging once again through the Paleozoic slime that will be my life until we get this turkey on its feet. I sent you a copy of my itinerary, so you have no excuse not to write. I’ll even write back. If I don’t come
running
back first.
Try and come to London for the opening. But if you can’t, I understand. Just remember to say a little prayer for me about 11
A.M
. your time on the morning of the 18th of September. Younger sisters still get scared.
All my love as always,
Reprinted from the SEATTLE BULLETIN-HERALD
An Interview with The Divine Miss M
R
EPORTER
: Good afternoon, Miss M. Welcome to Seattle.
M
ISS
M
: Oh, is it afternoon? Already?
R
EPORTER
: Almost night, actually.
M
ISS
M
: Imagine that.
R
EPORTER
: I wonder, could you tell us, how did you get your start? (Miss M leaves. She has her maid ask me to leave. I am dumbstruck. I weep, plead. I cajole. I offer to take her to eat Chinese. Miss M returns.) Well, perhaps we should move on. Do you expect to have any problems with language as you go from country to country?
M
ISS
M
: Au contraire. I’m looking forward to it. I love a little foreign tongue now and then, don’t you?
R
EPORTER
: Oh . . . uh . . . certainly. Certainly. Actually, it has been rumored that you have learned 3 or 4 words in six or seven languages in 8 or 9 weeks. If this is true, it would be a stunning feat.
M
ISS
M
: Not at all! For me, thorough preparation is a way of life. Semper pour la monde, as the French like to say. One does what one must do. I have never been a believer in the easy way out.
R
EPORTER
: —
M
ISS
M
: Except perhaps in the case of fire, in which instance a quick and facile exit is not just appropriate; it’s advisable.
R
EPORTER
: Well, besides your language studies, what else are you doing to prepare for what must be, even by your standards, a most ambitious undertaking?
M
ISS
M
: I’m taking a lot of vitamins, reading Gibbons7 later works on feudal vestiges in postindustrial Europe and trying desperately to get my hands on some speed. You wouldn’t by any chance . . .?
R
EPORTER
: Uh . . . I’m afraid not. But tell me, is there any country you are particularly excited about visiting?
M
ISS
M
: Oh, yes. Japan.
R
EPORTER
: Japan? But Japan isn’t on your itinerary.
M
ISS
M
: It isn’t? Oh, well. (Miss M shouts raucously to some unseen person.) Miss Frank! Scrap the Jap drag! We ain’t going!
R
EPORTER
: Is there any other country you are particularly interested in?
M
ISS
M
: I’m interested in them all. Individually and as a cohesive unit. The Old World versus the New, don’t you see? I want to compare and contrast. I want to understand what I am by seeing what others are . . . (The Divine takes a sip of Perrier.)
R
EPORTER
: How interesting.
M
ISS
M
: . . . wearing.
R
EPORTER
: Oh.
M
ISS
M
: It’s so hard to get it all from Vogue, you know. You have to be there. Try things on.
R
EPORTER
: Oh, I thought you meant something else. May I ask how rehearsals are going?
M
ISS
M
: There are no problems and there will be. no problems.
R
EPORTER
: Is that true?
M
ISS
M
: I never know how much of what I say is true. If I did, I’d bore myself to death.
R
EPORTER
: Well, if anyone can bring it off, you can. Do you work hard at being the best in your field?
M
ISS
M
: People are not the best because they work hard. They work hard because they are the best.
R
EPORTER
: Oh?
M
ISS
M
: It’s a matter of responsibility. To your talent, my dear. Of course, I don’t consider myself the best in anything. Except perhaps the trying on and proper selection of footwear. A pretty foot, you know, is a gift of nature. Goethe said that.
R
EPORTER
: Goethe? You’re familiar with the works of Goethe?
M
ISS
M
: Only the parts about feet.
R
EPORTER
: I see. Well, just a few more questions.
M
ISS
M
: Ask on, Macduff. And damn’d be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"
R
EPORTER
: Well, my question is: What, in the long run, do you expect to get out of this tour?
M
ISS
M
: I don’t know WHAT to expect. That’s why I’m doing it.
R
EPORTER
: Well, then, just one more question: Are you confident that what you do—onstage, I mean—will be understood and appreciated by non-Americans?
M
ISS
M
: I’m as confident as Cleopatra’s pussy.*
* Miss M has a way of throwing this allusion into interviews whenever questioned or challenged on some point of inner security. It has already been established beyond any reasonable doubt that Cleopatra never had a pussy; or if she did, no one ever saw it; or if anyone did see it, they were not impressed enough to remark on it in writing. It must, therefore, be assumed that Miss M’s use of this expression is nothing more than a smoke screen to hide her real feelings; a red herring of a soul, if you will. Or if you won’t, just another example of this woman’s total disregard for the simplest rules of civilized conversation.
In any case, I can only beg you not to cancel your subscription to this paper, which pledges, here and now, that we will never print another word about this absurd woman of whom one can only say what Lady Caroline said of Byron so many years ago: "Mad, bad and dangerous to know.”
I
n Seattle, that hilly, chilly city of the North which spreads out like lumpy pancake batter along the placid shores of the octopus-ridden Puget Sound, we had our first out-of-town tryout. At least,
I
was certainly trying to get out of town. I couldn’t believe that we had to be ready for the public in just two days. Everything and everyone was in disarray or disrepute. My staff and crew, upon whom I so heavily rely in times of crisis, were relying heavily on me. And all I wanted to do was drive up
to Vancouver. Ah, Vancouver! I played there once, and while I was singing “Superstar,” a ballad of ineffable longing and several modulations, someone hit me in the mouth with a bagel. I like to go back there every now and then to remember where things are
really
at.
But being one who never flees from a battle unless she has a confirmed first-class ticket, I remained at the helm. And what a ship I had to steer! And through what murky waters!
And all because of a new and devastating dilemma: Except for the Hot Dog, I had nothing to wear. I was either too thin or too fat for my old clothes, and the new clothes I’d had made were unthinkable, ranging from a Tribute—to—Bacchus number in hot-pink polyester peckered all over with vine leaves and plastic grape clusters, to an ensemble my designer called Man’s Best Friend, made from a Dalmatian-print polyester and complete with rhinestone collar and leash. How could I have let myself be talked into any of it?
“If I don’t feel right about what I’m in, I don’t feel right about anything.”
I was desperate. Clothes were, and are, as important to me as an Entrance. If I don’t feel right about what I’m in, I don’t feel right about anything. Every minute, every hour I should have spent rehearsing I spent getting into and out of clothes. I was needed onstage for a lighting check, for a sound check, for a music rehearsal, for a run-through. And still I was up in my dressing room, trying on this with that; wrapping a belt here; sticking a flower there; putting things on backwards, upside down, inside out. And of course, each new invention had to be tried on with twenty different pairs of shoes. Maybe a spiked heel would make it work. Maybe a low one. Boots? Sneakers? Shower shoes? Nothing helped.