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The singer she plays in The Rose has often been compared to Janis Joplin, who died of an overdose of drugs in 1970. Though Midler admires Joplin, the rock singer in the film is, in many respects, Bette Midler. Rose grew up in warm Florida, Bette in balmy Hawaii, and they were both unhappy. In Bette's family, as she remembers, there was always a lot of angry bellowing from her father, a house painter for the Navy. Even today Fred Midler has not come to see one of her shows, a source of obvious pain to his daughter. But Bette had a hardship even Rose didn't have: hers was the only Jewish family in a neighborhood of Samoans.
Many people might long for a life in Hawaii. Bette was determined to get away, and in 1965 she did, arriving in Manhattan with the intention of becoming an actress. For her it was easier to make it as a singer, however. She joined the chorus of Fiddler on the Roof and eventually moved up to play Tzeitel, Tevye's eldest daughter. When she left Fiddler, she did a cabaret act at the Improvisation club and, a short while later, at the gay Continental Baths. That is where the Divine Miss M, as she called herself, was born; the primarily homosexual audiences encouraged her free-spirited outrageousness. "They gave me the confidence to be tacky, cheesy, to take risks," she says. "They encouraged my spur-of-the-moment improvisations."
Then in 1972 something equally important happened: she met Aaron Russo, 36, a New Yorker and a rock promoter. He yelled like her father, she says, and he was her lover for six months, her man ager for six years, and her Svengali all the time. "Make me a legend!" Bette told him, and he did, or almost did. Like Alan Bates, who plays Rose's tyrannical man ager in the movie, Russo dominated Bette's life and her career, in terms of the job his advice was impeccable. Until The Rose, he turned down every film role that was offered, waiting for the one that would let her shine brightest. People laughed at the time, but on her European tour last year, he even demanded that she be paid in gold. He was turned down, but the idea was far from laughable. Gold has since more than doubled in value.
But the pair's fights became almost epic in scope. "I liked a good fight like he did," Midler recalls. "But I didn't like any one to fight back, and he fought much harder than I did." She left him and fled to Paris for three months in 1974, only to return for several more rounds. The knockout came last February, and Bette dropped Russo as her manager.
For the past three years Bette has been living with Peter Riegert, 32, the actor who played Boon, the social chairman of Delta Tau Chi, in Animal House, and the hero's best friend in Head over Heels. Though they live in Los Angeles, they have rented a loft in Manhattan for their trips East. Calm and low-key, Riegert seems to be the grounding for Bette's electric charge, her steadying influence. On stage, says Midler, she is "a character without fear, who has no problem being vulgar or outrageous. But in my private life, I'm one of the most paranoid per sons in the world."