Word: midlerisms
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...bubble, bounce and ribald badinage. And, boy, can she belt a song, especially ones from the age when people wrote songs for stars to belt. It's tempting to call Bette Midler a force of nature -- except there is nothing natural about what she does. She's a living, breathing high concept, a bundle of nerve and other people's conventions (a little Mae West, a touch of Judy Garland, maybe all three Andrews Sisters rolled into one). But if as a performer Midler conjures up an older, bolder show-biz era, she doesn't nostalgize it. She gives...
...cast a creation like Midler -- you package her. Or allow her to package herself, as she has in For the Boys, which her company produced. Not surprisingly, Boys comes out a lot like one of her songs, a slightly dislocating blend of warmth and knowingness...
...much of the image does fit. Returning to California recently, I picked up a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle and read about people attending a funeral in pinks and turquoises and singing along to Bette Midler ("Dress for a Brazilian party!" the invitation -- from the deceased -- read); about a missing cat identifiable by "a rhinestone collar w/name and electronic cat door opener"; about women from Los Angeles hiring migrant workers to wait in line for them to buy watches shaped like cucumbers or bacon and eggs. On Hollywood Boulevard I saw a HISTORIC LANDMARK sign outside the site...
...with life-threatening diseases. Williamson is also the prime fund raiser for Project Angel Food, a program that delivers 200 gourmet meals daily to dying AIDS patients in the Los Angeles area. Among the 800 volunteers who help with Angel Food are recording mogul David Geffen, Shirley MacLaine, Bette Midler, painter David Hockney and 20th Century Fox head Barry Diller. Most of those celebrities are not devotees of Williamson's think-positive course lectures, but a few are, and the glamour has rubbed off. "There's so much to worry about," says Sandy Gallin, Hollywood manager of top stars...
...Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Sting, Ziggy Marley, Bette Midler...