Word: midlerisms
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...island peoples (appropriately abbreviated P.R. vs. R.P., Puerto Rico vs. the Republic of the Philippines) did its fair share to rev up excitement in a town that is used to ethnic marketing (note the billboards for visiting superstars from South Korea, north Africa and Israel, alongside those of Bette Midler and Carrot Top). On fight night, national flags were worn as athletic costumes, though the big money men were still accompanied by towering escorts in body-tight metallic lamé and slave-ankle stilettos. Some traditions never change...
...saying the present has little to offer. In doing so, she is also forging a bond with her loyal gay audience. It is an axiom of pop culture that no uncloseted gay man can be a star but that women can be stars by appropriating gay motifs. Bette Midler steals gays' jokes; Madonna steals their style. It's not just in the Nazified naughtiness of her night-at-the-Anvil routines, or the treatment of boys as toys (the Queen steps on their supine writhing bodies). It's in the dressing up as iconic actresses, the power plays...
...compliment came from an unlikely source. ''You're so tasteful,'' gushed Bette Midler. Lena Horne's reply was something of a surprise: ''I'm tired of being tasteful.'' In this family history, Gail Lumet Buckley reveals the source of her mother's weariness and, en route, shows that fatigue can be contagious. Lena, it appears, was no sudden black star, up from ghetto poverty. Her ancestors, the ''old'' Hornes, had settled in New York City before the turn of the century. From the evidence of the book's many photographs, they were all attractive, intelligent people who paid a good...
...guys named Russell. True to form, he notes, she "bests" him even here: her dalliance took place in a Cadillac, his in a Datsun. It was clear during her childhood in Michigan, Ciccone says, that Madonna wasn't shy about deploying her sexuality to get what she wanted - Bette Midler once called her "the woman who pulled herself up by her bra straps." But while his sister wielded sex as a weapon, especially after dropping out of college to pursue stardom in New York, Ciccone's sexuality often posed him problems. After he came out to his father, a conservative...
...tired!" Bette Midler chirps as she rides onto the gigantic Caesars Palace stage astride a donkey. In THE SHOWGIRL MUST GO ON, the 62-year-old chantootsie often declares that she's exhausted, yet in her sharp 90-min. act, she seems ageless and indefatigable--strutting, singing, hopping around in a fish tail, cavorting under a 3,200-lb. (1,450 kg) headdress of pink feathers. Showgirl, a slick $10 million production, replaces Céline Dion's elephantine extravaganza with the unique Midler mix: sass, heart and a show-biz salesmanship that's been irresistible since her early days...