Word: midler
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Though the life of none of the actresses strictly parallels her character's, Midler (still on her first marriage) says she relates to the first wife's plight. "I always read the papers, and I keep up with all the great divorces, and I am as chagrined and appalled as the next person," she declares. The never married Keaton has been linked in the past with Warren Beatty and Woody Allen, both of whom have gone through their share of women. But Keaton reports that her romances were "nothing like in this movie." Hawn, longtime roommate of Kurt Russell...
...Midler says she wanted Hawn's part because Hawn got to wear the best clothes, while her character was more of a frump. "I was the workhorse of the trio," she laments. "I didn't have any glamour at all." But Midler says she doesn't mind playing her age; the hard part is getting a chance to do it. "It's been pretty dry," she says; after all, Hollywood has not in recent history found the issues of middle-aged women to be particularly absorbing. But, Midler adds, "the phone rings for a while after a big hit like...
...Bette Midler, the designated frump in The First Wives Club, stares at Goldie Hawn's body with mixed feelings: envy for its sleekness and disdain for the work needed to maintain it. All those hours logged on the Stairmaster: "You climb and you climb, and you don't get anywhere." Why, Midler might be referring to women movie stars and women's pictures. In Hollywood it's one step up, two steps back, and sometimes you fall...
...women's fear of aging ("If I give you one more face-lift," Dr. Rob Reiner warns Hawn, "you're gonna be able to blink your lips") that make the movie a more genteel version of the misogynistic She-Devil and Death Becomes Her. And the audience applauds when Midler, Hawn and Diane Keaton take comic revenge on their duplicitous mates. In movie theaters around the country, similar crowds registered similar approval for the movie--enough to set Hollywood to scratching its (male) head and to give women moviegoers cause to hope for more films like...
There are more mundane reasons First Wives is a hit. It has three stars playing to their strengths: Midler the canny yenta, Keaton mining lodes of pruney anguish, Hawn a glorious hoot encased in her collagenized lips and sprawling ego. And before the film gets haggard in Act III, it's pretty darn funny, thanks to director Hugh Wilson (who wove a camaraderie of losers in his TV show WKRP in Cincinnati), screenwriter Robert Harling (Steel Magnolias) and rewriter Paul Rudnick (The Addams Family...