A View From a Broad Page 4

  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

  Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know:

  An Interview with The Divine Miss M

  REPORTER: Good afternoon, Miss M. Welcome to Seattle.

  MISS M: Oh, is it afternoon? Already? REPORTER: Almost night, actually.

  MISS M: Imagine that.

  REPORTER: 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?

  MISS M: Au contraire. I’m looking forward to it. I love a little foreign tongue now and then, don’t you?

  REPORTER: 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.

  MISS 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.

  REPORTER: —

  MISS M: Except perhaps in the case of fire, in which instance a quick and facile exit is not just appropriate; it’s advisable.

  REPORTER: Well, besides your language studies, what else are you doing to prepare for what must be, even by your standards, a most ambitious undertaking?

  MISS 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 . . .?

  REPORTER: Uh . . . I’m afraid not. But tell me, is there any country you are particularly excited about visiting?

  MISS M: Oh, yes. Japan.

  REPORTER: Japan? But Japan isn’t on your itinerary.

  MISS M: It isn’t? Oh, well. (Miss M shouts raucously to some unseen person.) Miss Frank! Scrap the Jap drag! We ain’t going!

  REPORTER: Is there any other country you are particularly interested in?

  MISS 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.)

  REPORTER: How interesting.

  MISS M: . . . wearing.

  REPORTER: Oh.

  MISS M: It’s so hard to get it all from Vogue, you know. You have to be there. Try things on.

  REPORTER: Oh, I thought you meant something else. May I ask how rehearsals are going?

  MISS M: There are no problems and there will be. no problems.

  REPORTER: Is that true?

  MISS M: I never know how much of what I say is true. If I did, I’d bore myself to death.

  REPORTER: Well, if anyone can bring it off, you can. Do you work hard at being the best in your field?

  MISS M: People are not the best because they work hard. They work hard because they are the best.

  REPORTER: Oh?

  MISS 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.

  REPORTER: Goethe? You’re familiar with the works of Goethe?

  MISS M: Only the parts about feet.

  REPORTER: I see. Well, just a few more questions.

  MISS M: Ask on, Macduff. And damn’d be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"

  REPORTER: Well, my question is: What, in the long run, do you expect to get out of this tour?

  MISS M: I don’t know WHAT to expect. That’s why I’m doing it.

  REPORTER: Well, then, just one more question: Are you confident that what you do—onstage, I mean—will be understood and appreciated by non-Americans?

  MISS M: I’m as confident as Cleopatra’s pussy.*

  * * *

  E•D•I•T•O•R•S•N•O•T•E

  * * *

  * 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.”

  • ONE TO GET READY •

  In 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.

  My wardrobe dilemma brought everything to a standstill. And the time pressure was enormous. Tempers flared. Fights broke out. Some threatened to quit if I didn’t come out of the dressing room. Finally, having no other choice, I swallowed my pride and called my designer in Los Angeles, the nut who’d made the clothes I loathed so much, and begged him to come to Seattle. Always the soul of honesty, I told him he’d be walking into an atmosphere charged with tension.

  “Nothing fazes me” was all he said.

  When he arrived, that very same evening, he looked like the brash young man in his late twenties that he was. But a mere twenty-four hours later, he was unrecognizable. His entire body sagged. The flesh fell from his eyes. His face became wrinkled and puffy. If you asked him for the time or the salt, he would cry. His gait, once so confident and strong, became halting. His hands began to shake. At the end of rehearsal, we carried him sobbing to his hotel room, where he spent the night sewing— the sheets to the bedspread; the towels to the shower curtain; his shoes to his socks.

  Oh, it was not an easy time. For any of us. Only Miss Frank, exhausted though she was from zipping and unzipping, hemming and unhemming, was able to smile. In fact, she seemed very pleased with herself, forever mumbling in my ear about just deserts and the terrible wages of sin.

  But as is so often the case in a business where you lose fifty grand if it doesn’t, the show did go on. Two hours late and in a shambles, but a show nevertheless. The audience was, as most audiences usually are, unthinkably patient and forgiving. Dolores and The Magic Lady were ragged but wonderful. The crowd even liked my dog dress, which I actually wore and which became the surprise hit of the evening, retrieving for my designer both his reputation and his youth.

  Of course, I kept telling myself, trying not to let the elation go to my head, this was still America, home sweet home. The real test lay about six thousand miles away. In London. And that night of reckoning was getting closer by the second.

  “. . . in a business where you lose fifty grand if it doesn’t the show did go on.”

  PALLADIUM LONDON STOP AM ON MY WAY STOP ARRIVING MOMENTARILY STOP TALLY HO STOP BETTE

  • OPENING NIGHT •

  “I’m just crazy about royalty, especially queens.”

  • OPENING NIGHT •

  THE LONDON PALLADIUM

  Oh, my, my! London! At last! What a thrill it is to be here playing the Palladium right in the very heart of The Old UK— or The YUK, as we sometimes call it. Well, there’ll always be an England, they say. Tonight we put that to the ultimate test. Oh, I tell you, we are so excited. We have done it all. We read our Shakespeare. We boned up on Blake. We read Milton till we went blind. I did so want to impress you all. Unfortunately, I don’t speak Arabic. Well, at least I haven’t had any trouble with the metric system. We’ve gone metric too, you know. It was a difficult transition to make. So many of us had been thinking in inches for so many, many years. And you know, while we’re in London we’re hoping to meet the Royal Family. I don’t know why it is, but every time I hit a town the blue-bloods all seem to flee to their summer residences. I can’t imagine why. I’m just crazy about royalty, especially queens. Your Queen, for example, Elizabeth the Second . . . Elizabeth the Tooth, we call her. My dears, she is the whitest woman of them all. She makes us all feel like the Third World. I only have one question to ask Her Maj:

  “What have you got in that handbag?” . . . Oh, I tell you, I love her. I’d kill to get my hands on one of her hats. Such unerring taste. Who do you think makes those hats for her, anyway? She’s probably got a little hat fairy chained to the basement saying, “Queenie’s gonna love this one!” His specialty is special hats for special occasions. I was lucky enough to see one of them. It’s called The Last Supper. It has twelve little apostles about the brim and little pieces of matzoh hanging down about the ears. It’s her Easter number. . . . And of course, I just adore Charles. Do you think I stand a chance in this hot dog suit? I read somewhere that he can marry a commoner. I guess he wouldn’t want someone as common as my own self. . . . Well, some of us are losers and some of us are wieners. But you know, my very favorite of all is Princess Anne. Such an active lass. So outdoorsy. She loves nature in spite of what it did to her. Oh, my God! Did I say that? I didn’t say that. Dare I go on? . . . All right. How many of you would like to see my impression of Princess Anne? . . . Hmmm. Now, if I can only get out of this sausage drag. . . .

  • THE MOUTH OF THE THAMES •

  Ever since I first saw Greer Garson show Laurence Olivier how to shoot an arrow in Pride and Prejudice, I have been an avid Anglophile. So you can imagine how I looked forward to seeing all those famous English landmarks that had excited my imagination for so long: the Tower, with its cache of royal jewels I not only adored but coveted; the brooding moors where Emily Bronte walked in gloom and sensible shoes; the Albert Memorial with its stirring salute to Engineering; and, of course, Stonehenge. To my amazement, I soon discovered that they were all hundreds of miles apart from each other. I guess before one actually visits them, everyone tends to think of their favorite countries as one grand Disneyland filled with national monuments and historical treasures conveniently laid out for easy viewing, when what they really are filled with, of course, is people going to work, laundromats and places to buy rat poison. The realization that England was not just an efficiently organized museum was at first disappointing, then exhilarating, then disappointing again as I counted how few days I had to see it all. Faced with such a plethora of things to see and do, I had to decide where to go first. And I had to decide fast. Charles Jourdan seemed like a good idea.

  Donning a gray knit cap that hung somewhat awkwardly down one side of my jaw, a pair of sunglasses that hid my eyes and a long woolen scarf which completely covered the lower half of my face, I stepped sweating into the English sunshine, blind as a bat and unable to breathe, but completely unrecognizable.

  I felt these precautions necessary because of the tremendous success I had been in that tasteful town of swans and swains. In fact, when I wasn’t busy doing TV shows or radio spots, I was aflitter with parties and celebrations given in honor of my recent ascension to the English Theatrical Throne, an ascension which had taken everyone by surprise, especially me. Inevitably, of course, the good wishes and good feelings expressed by those present at Parties and Celebrations thrown to honor somebody else’s success are as forced as the mincemeat one is often made to eat at them. But being as great a lover of fakery and fraud as I am of accusation and scandal, I had a grand old time.

  So my decision to go to Charles Jourdan was not completely frivolous. I needed a new pair of shoes for yet another fete to which I had been invited by a very noble group of English men and women who thought I might be amusing for an afternoon. Oh, yes, what a rara avis I was to those who had never been to the slums of Honolulu. I provided them with such delight. You should have heard this particular bunch gasp and swoon when I stuck two fingers into m
y bowl of haggis, mistaking it for a bowl of poi, a gloplike staple of the Islands. How I regaled them with tales of the South Pacific and the North Bronx. And how they regaled me with their stories of Forthright Industrial Action and the Truth about Ale.

  After luncheon, things really picked up. I was quietly staring at an enormous painting of the lady of the house, trying to decide if she was holding in her lap a small dog or a rat with a bow in its hair, when a young woman of serious demeanor approached me. I’d say she was about thirty-five and had never been—or, having been, was disappointed. She was all in black wool except for a red hat topped all over with what appeared to be a salade niçoise. As she approached, I could see a solid determination in her eyes that seemed totally at odds with the whimsical hat. In fact, everything about her was about as solid as solid can get. As she came striding towards me, she held out her hand for me to shake. Fearful of what she might do to my fingers, I gingerly gave her only two.

  “I’m Cecily,” she said as she relaxed her grip.

  “Bette Midler,” I responded in my most English Garden manner.

  “I know,” Cecily said, “of course. That’s why I’m so anxious to speak with you.”

  She practically towed me into a quiet corner.

  “Well, darling,” she said to me in that tone the English consider chatty, “I have the most extraordinary idea. I want to use your face and your money in what I consider a daring—and brilliant—scheme of mine to produce a special designer line of diaphragms and douches.”

  I looked around to see if anyone had heard. Then I had to laugh. But Cecily was dead serious, and her reason for thinking the venture worthwhile was a most curious blend of politics, hedonism and outright greed.