On Broadway and in the movies, Miss M is packing 'em in
What's that angry green parrot doing on top of that mound of cotton-candy hair? And who is that in such an enormous wedding dress, balancing the cake, complete with bride and groom, on top of her head? Isn't the answer obvious by now? She is, as she announces in the opening number of her new Broadway show, "the big noise from Winnetka." She does not, in fact, come from Winnetka, but Bette Midler is the biggest noise—and one of the biggest talents—of the '70s.
Those who do not yet know about her soon will. Hollywood tom-toms are all but nominating her for an Academy Award for her first screen role, in The Rose. The movie, the story of a doomed '60s rock star, is one of the few commercial hits of the fall season, and enthusiastic word of mouth is proving more potent than any advertising. Meanwhile, for those who can make it to Broadway, the lady's other, outrageously funny side is on view at the Palace Theater in Bette! Divine Madness. It is the hottest ticket in Manhattan.
Describing a tour of Europe, she lights upon the Queen of England, "the whitest woman in the world. She makes all the rest of us look like the Third World." Where, Bette asks sweetly, with only the faintest hint of bitchery, does Her Majesty get her hats? Pretending to sew, she conjures up a whole line of milliners in the basement of Buckingham Palace, threading needles for their monarch at that very moment. Then, she notes, there is that noble equestrienne, Princess Anne. How would Anne answer if someone asked how old she was? Bette wonders. Without a word, she provides the answer: very slowly, like a trained horse at the circus, she taps out the number with her right foot.
Those are the clean jokes—just about all of them. Most of the others range from very dirty to dirtier still, and all of them are quite funny. She does not take them seriously, and neither does the audience. She giggles instead of leers, and there is no feeling, as there is in most such humor, that someone is being put down.
Most of all she laughs at herself. At 34, she is not a pretty woman, but she turns even that to advantage. Some of her jokes are about her ample breasts: "Two of the reasons why I did not become a ballerina." A couple are about the rest of her body. Sitting down, she notices that her upper arm is still moving when the rest of her has stopped. She jiggles it and —incredible sight—her thighs, legs and neck too. "Isn't it terrible," she sighs, "that when you hit 30, your body wants a life of its own?"
She even laughs at her own pretensions to stardom. She announces that she is "a screen star, in the tradition of Shirley Temple, Liv Ullmann and Miss Piggy." When the audience good-naturedly boos one of her jokes, she exclaims: "The crowd turns on the diva. [Pause] But the diva doesn't care!" Her singing, much of it done with three saucy young women called the Harlettes, is no threat to Streisand, or even Minnelli. But it bursts with feeling—almost too much for mere lyrics to express.