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  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  IT BEGINS

  CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON

  On the Distressing Aspects of Being Interviewed

  DEATH BY RELISH

  OPENING NIGHT LONDON

  The Mouth of the Thames

  CHOPPED HERRING

  The Continental Divine

  THIGHS AND WHISPERS

  SOMEWHERE IN THE NORTH OF FRANCE

  Rantings of a Manic Mermaid

  AT THE GERMAN BORDER

  CONFESSIONS OF A HASH EATER

  THE RIVER OF KINGS

  AN AMERICAN IN SYDNEY

  HOT WIND

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ______For my mother______

  • RUTH SCHINDEL MIDLER •

  ______With Everlasting Love______

  Special thanks to Jerry Blatt

  •INTRODUCTION•

  Long, long ago, around 1980, through a veil of hot, briny tears, I seem to recall that I toured the world with my show, for the first time, and lived to tell. The book you hold in your hands was the “confaction” that came out of that tour. I was thirty-five years old, cute as a button and excited beyond belief. I was going to see the world, and the world was going to see me. “I knew so little of the world: Slander, not geography, had always been my strong suit” . . . and there was more than a grain of truth in that. I was clueless. My international travel was limited to an earlier trip to Paris, where I was surrounded by schoolchildren who made fun of my shoes.

  We were a motley crew; a quarrelsome band that murdered the time; three libidinous girl singers; and many, many attractive soundmen, stagehands, road managers, drivers, and fans. It was a powder keg, to put it mildly. Add in new and various faces and races that wanted to be our best friends every third day, new drugs to try and new bars to visit, and you can imagine how hard it was to keep chaos at bay.

  One of the things that surprised me most was that the world knew me! And they seemed to love me and showered me with affection at every stop: bouquets, gifts, letters, notes, telegrams, confetti, invitations and standing ovations. It was a whirlwind, a mob scene; I was at the center of it and it was hard to separate the best intentions from the worst.

  And the shows were great; some of the best of my life.

  In those days, if I had even the germ of an idea, someone would move heaven and earth to make it happen. I am a reader, and have been my whole life. I love books, and love all the romance associated with them. The bindings! The illustrations by N. C. Wyeth, Maxfield

  Parrish, Jesse Wilcox Smith, et al. . . . The dreadful lives that everyone led, being paid by the word, too tragic. Those green eyeshades! Fabulous! I even adore editors: How marvelous to be squirrelled away in some dank corner spinning literary dross into gold!

  I had decided I wanted to do a book before we started rehearsals, and lo and behold, the publishers were lined up in droves. What clout I had in those days! My best friend, Jerry, and his boyfriend, Sean (not his real name, which was Wesley—don’t ask), searched maps and guidebooks to decide where we could shoot pictures to accompany whatever was to come. We did many by-the-seat-of-our-pants photo shoots when abroad, like the Penguin Parade in Australia, and though most of the photos never made the book, I remember many of the charming, out-of-the-way places we found; the taxidermy store in Paris, the monastery outside Munich, musty old London bookstalls.

  Things happened. There were fistfights, fires, drugs, accidents, arrests, screaming matches, phones thrown at old friends and way too much press to face, day after day, bruises and all. It was not a pretty picture. Couples paired off, or didn’t . . . one couple married after that tour is still married; a driver I adored got sick and died not long after we left.

  The challenge was to make it funny, and when I finally got home, I found that a lot of it was. But a lot of it wasn’t, and I finally had to face it. After this tour, I knew that certain things were not for me, and that I had to make a choice. Could I continue to make a joyful noise when I was angry, ill and hungover? Some can, but I couldn’t. My manager, Aaron Russo, and I broke up after a series of violent fights, and I had to live without the kind of support I had had for more than ten years. It’s not an exaggeration to say that that tour changed my life.

  So this book was a kind of last hurrah. When I read it, I hear a disarmingly younger, sweeter voice, a character I adore, but whom I don’t hear from much anymore. I loved her, and mourn her from time to time, like Márgarét on page 129.

  By 1980, the ’60s were finally over. The cloud of HIV/AIDS was about to descend on the blue-sky world I lived in, taking with it a whole generation of artists, performers and friends, including Jerry and Sean. I am not sure that this little confection captures a whole time, but I think it’s an accurate picture of the spirit and tone of what I was doing in those days. I hope it holds up, and that you find your best younger self in it, as I do.

  —Bette Midler

  October 2013

  • IT BEGINS •

  “I knew so little of the world, really. Slander, not geography, had always been my strongest suit.”

  • IT BEGINS •

  I will never forget it! Only moments before I found out that a world tour was being planned for me, I was exactly where I most like to be—flat on my back on my lovely redwood deck, overlooking the glorious, ever-changing moods of the Santa Ana Freeway. I was truly at peace. And I was truly a mess, having just forged my way through the potentially crippling round of severe calisthenics I dutifully perform every evening of the year. Well, almost every evening. If I happen to be at home.

  Actually, I shouldn’t belittle my exercises so by calling them calisthenics when they are, in fact, a unique distillation of semi-classical semidance movements designed specifically with my very own body proportions in mind by the well-known physiotherapist Dr. D . . . , who, though only thirty-two, and having no congenital defects worth mentioning, can barely stand up straight. This apparent conflict between what Dr. D . . . claims his program can do for the human physique and what it has actually done to his seems to have had no effect whatsoever on his Hollywood following. In fact, there is a small, shrill clique of high-profile Hollywoodites who claim that Dr. D . . . , is the very Messiah of Serious Body Building. Not body building, of course, in the sense of that atavistic desire and/or need to lift heavy metal to face level, but body building in the more mystical sense: training that complex jumble of tissue and electrochemical reactions to become an instrument totally subservient to one’s will, ready to meet life’s every challenge no matter how sordid or bizarre.

  Little did I know what challenges I was to face—or how soon—when sprawled out and panting on my deck I suddenly realized that the loud knocking I was hearing was not the frenzied beating of my heart but someone beating frantically at my door. As I ran, still dazed and blinded by sweat, to answer the insistent call, I took, quite literally a turn for the worse and ricocheted off a mirrored wall colliding, tete a tete, with the life-size statue of the Bloated Buddha I’d unearthed just recently at a swap meet in Anaheim. I had placed the porcelain wonder in my vestibule in the fervid hope that from it might emanate a flow of tranquillity to counteract the general uproar of my household. Now the statue lay shattered in a thousand pieces. Not a good omen.

  As my maid, the unflappable Aretha, began to vacuum around me, I made one or two unsuccessful attempts to rise out of the debr
is. I was just about to despair of ever walking again when suddenly the knocking stopped and I heard a key turn in the lock. Only one person had a key to my house. I wish I could say it was a lover or even a close and dear friend. But no, it was my manager, a man of direct action and some girth, whose emotional response to any given event was generally the exact opposite of mine. One look at his smiling face and I knew I was in trouble.

  “Little did I know what challenges I was to face—or how soon . . .”

  “Here,” I said holding up one of my ex-Buddha’s ears, “it’s yours. I’ve decided to become a Taoist. I go into retreat tomorrow.”

  Without even the slightest acknowledgment of my offering or my bruises, the heartless man pulled a thick purple folder from his pocket and threw it a few feet from where I lay collapsed on the floor.

  “Read that!” he commanded in a tone most often used by major generals and some minor household gods.

  Brushing away the hair from my eyes and the evil thoughts from my heart, I crawled through the litter of broken mirror and porcelain limbs towards the mysterious folder.

  “Itinerary!” he said proudly as I retrieved it.

  “You what?” I began, then stopped short, dumbstruck, as I stared open-mouthed at the very first page:

  BETTE MIDLER WORLD TOUR–

  * * *

  Opening Dates—Number of Performances

  * * *

  Sept. 11—Seattle (three nights)

  17—London (five nights)

  27—Brighton (one nights)

  30—Gothenburg (one nights)

  Oct. 1—Stockholm (one night, two shows)

  2—Copenhagen (one night)

  3—Lund (one night)

  6—Hamburg (one night)

  7—Frankfurt (one nights)

  8—Munich (one nights)

  10—Paris (two nights)

  13—The Hague (one night)

  14—Antwerp (one night)

  16—Amsterdam (two nights, four shows)

  25—Sydney (five nights)

  Nov. 1—Melbourne (one nights)

  4—Perth (one nights)

  7—Adelaide (one night)

  9—Brisbane (one nights)

  12—Sydney (three nights)

  17—Honolulu?

  I couldn’t believe my eyes! It was truly an astonishment of nations. I looked up at my manager, then back to the purple folder, flipping frantically towards the middle, where the entire project was fully outlined in all its fearsome detail:

  October 17

  8 A.M.

  Bette, Band, Harlettes check out of hotel in Amsterdam.

  9 A.M.

  Train or limo to The Hague. All check into The Hague Hilton. Free lunch served to all in the Tulip Lounge, except Miss Midler, who goes directly to press conference.

  4 P.M.

  Sound check.

  7 P.M.

  Light food served for cast & crew. Miss Midler, at managers request, will not receive food or drink until after the show.

  8 P.M.

  Curtain.

  October 18

  7 A.M.

  Meet in lobby. Check out. Remember, you pay your incidentals. Bette: All calls to Peter will be charged to your room.

  8 A.M.

  Entire company train or limo to Antwerp. You must clear Customs yourself. Please! BE CAREFUL. Remember, our motto on this trip: No lust, no dust, no bust. And try to get rid of your change. New currency this afternoon.

  4 P.M.

  Sound check. (May be later if elephants have not vacated hall by 3.)

  7 P.M.

  Cast & crew to band room for dinner. Miss Midler to dressing room for candid photo session.

  8 P.M.

  Curtain.

  NOTE: This venue has no curtain. This stage is at floor level and less than 14 feet wide. Lighting and sound facilities are minimal. Certain adjustments may have to be made. BE PREPARED.

  12 P.M.

  Special tour of Antwerp night spots leaves from hotel lobby.

  12:15 A.M.

  Return to hotel.

  12:20 A.M.

  Lights out.

  October 19

  8 A.M.

  Entire company drive from Antwerp to Brussels airport. Clear Customs. Change money into Marks. Pray the poor dollar isn’t out for the count.

  11:15 A.M.

  Leave Brussels.

  12:25 P.M.

  Arrive Frankfurt. Clear Customs.

  1 P.M.

  Lunch for troupe in Beethoven Lounge. Miss Midler to beauty parlor for perm.

  4 P.M.

  Sound check.

  7 P.M.

  The promoters have arranged for a light dinner, but be careful. Some have complained of aftereffects from local food here. Lomotil available at light booth. Miss Midler to basement to meet local dignitaries.

  8:15 P.M.

  Curtain.

  I didn’t know what to do, what to say. Once again a questionable consortium of managers, agents, lawyers and record promoters had concocted a plan for me that would force me out of my cozy existence and into a maelstrom of madness. Once again, just when visions of breakfast in bed and phones off the hook promised to become reality, I would have to go back to work.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to work. I enjoy working, tremendously. But I had just finished making my very first movie, The Rose—if you are kind enough not to consider my celluloid interpretation of Mary, Mother of God, which I did for seventy bucks one afternoon in Detroit to pay for a phone call to my mom in Honolulu—and the experience had left me exhilarated but worn to a shadow. There were so many new things to contend with— like getting up at 6 A.M., getting to know what a gaffer was and, most important, getting thin. Of course, there were some initial difficulties when the director first told me the disappointing news that if the film was to have any semblance of reality at all there would have to be moments when other people were onscreen at the same time I was. My despair over this turn of events was, however, somewhat ameliorated by the fact that the person I most often had to share the screen with turned out to be Alan Bates, whose unforgettable fig-sucking scene in Women in Love literally changed my life. Actually, I found I liked film acting quite a lot, although not half as much as I liked my trailer, which is exactly the kind of home I hope to have someday.

  So it was not just having to work again that bothered me. I was pained to think that I would have to leave my beloved Los Angeles, with all its attendant glory, and travel to places whose names I had never even heard and, upon hearing, could scarcely pronounce. I knew so little of the world, really. Slander, not geography, has always been my strongest suit. The closest thing I had ever had to a foreign experience was Ahmet Ertegun, record executive and Turk. Oh, I was truly in a dither.

  “. . . I liked film acting quite a lot, although not half as much as I liked my trailer . . .”

  With a flair for the dramatic that annoys almost everyone around me, I flung open an exquisite set of priceless French doors and looked out at the Greater Los Angeles Basin, twitching below me in the dying August sun. On the other side of the Freeway, hundreds of hummingbirds were gathering in the twilight, preparing to ravage my bougainvillea. How could I leave this throbbing center of vitality and delight, this modern Athens, this garbanzo in the salad of human achievement, and travel to places where the plumbing was uncertain and where there might not be even one Chinese restaurant?

  My exercises, which usually have such a calming effect on me, failed me completely, and I flew into a tantrum of panic and despair so titanic that even my longtime companion and wardrobe mistress, the very proper Miss Frann Frank, born, bred and even beaned once in Boston at a Red Sox game, became fearful —not so much for me as for her new issue of Watchtower, which I had ripped out of her hands and was about to gobble down, admonitions and all.

  Fortunately, good sense and a slap across the face were to prevail. In fact, after several hours of pouting and pacing and just the teeniest nip or two of Courvoisier, going
around the world began to have its appeal.

  First of all, my manager’s incessant yapping in my ear about International Launching Pads and Smart Career Moves made me so furious I would have gone anywhere to get away from him. Even Lund. Wherever that was.

  Secondly, I felt that my mind, unquenchable in its thirst for cultural enrichment and cheap thrills, might benefit from such a world-girdling juggernaut. So, in fact, might my jugs, which, despite my strict adherence to Dr. D . . .’s routines, were beginning to turn to mush in the soft California air.

  But beyond all that, the fact was that I had always had a burning desire to see the world. When I was a little girl in Honolulu, all my friends and neighbors, everyone I went to school with, had their roots in some romantic place or other—China, Japan, Malaya, the Philippines—while my folks hailed from New Jersey. My father had moved out to Hawaii during the Depression, not so much to find work as to find a proper setting for my mother, whom he always thought too beautiful and delicate for prosaic Passaic.

  But growing up in Paradise was difficult for me. I always felt so boring next to the people around me, so colorless. In such exotic company, I was a hopelessly mundane transplant, a common, worthless dandelion lost in a garden of orchids. Just hearing my teacher call out the names of the kids in my class— Akamatsu, Yick Lung, Tuituila, In’nopu—would set me off on the wildest kind of daydreaming.

  As I looked through the purple folder again, those old luscious waves of Longing and Romance crested and crashed upon the shores of my very being. For a moment, I felt ten again, and I realized that even though I had never done it before, going around the world would be, for me, a kind of a sentimental journey. And the only thing I put above Sentiment is Revenge.