Word: hollywood
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...across the proscenium in a mermaid's spangled fin and a motorized wheelchair; wowed crowds with her renowned mammary-balloon ballet. So what can she do for a 1987 encore? Strut into her hit movie, Outrageous Fortune, abuse a defenseless pay phone and insist, "Gimme back my bleepin' quarta!" Hollywood may be far from Broadway, but for Bette Midler it's just another opening, another show...
...Dumbo. Her first, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, was tenth among 1986's box-office winners; the next, Ruthless People, ranked eighth; Outrageous Fortune has earned more than $25 million in the first 25 days of release. The cheeky trio made Disney a major movie studio and Midler Hollywood's top female attraction. Rhapsodizes Jeffrey Katzenberg, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, who recently signed her to a three-picture production deal: "Bette Midler is the single greatest asset as a performer we have." Asset? You Bette! You're the company's hottest female star since Minnie Mouse...
...vexed at her power, turned on her. There were shoving matches and walkouts. It was a sorry time. In retrospect, Midler notes, "I feel I've had my revenge. What goes around comes around." Translation: Siegel's and Wahl's careers have treadmilled, while Bette's has escalated. But Hollywood seemed not to know what to do with its unconventional star. Says Rose Director Mark Rydell: "She didn't fail us. The film business failed...
...with great softness. You feel she could creak, crumble at any minute." And busted: something like a nervous breakdown ensued. "I couldn't face the world," she recalls. "I slept all day and cried all night. I was drinking to excess. I was miserable." Then, as if in a Hollywood musical (not The Rose), love found Bette Midler. "When I was at my lowest point," Bette says, "Harry called me up out of the blue. This was October of 1984, and in two months we were married...
Fettered Bette is better than no Bette at all, we guess. But why should she not do what she does uniquely well? Perhaps because Hollywood just now does not care to see the blowsy, pug-beautiful singer, alone and proud on the screen. Instead it wants a Bette Midler like the woman she plays in Ruthless People: bound and blindfolded and sending out comic danger signals. Illuminating these undemanding comedies uses about one green fingernail's worth of her gift...