Word: rocke
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Bette Midler is not a great singer or a subtle actress or an exquisite beauty; yet she just may be a movie star. In The Rose, a highly fictionalized biography of a Janis Joplin-like rock icon, Midler can hardly be contained by a wide screen and six-track Dolby Stereo. She not only blasts out her many numbers with blistering fury, but she also attempts to strike every emotional chord known to junky movie melodrama. Even when she comes up flat, it is hard to look away. Midler does not make the mistake of begging for attention, like...
...them as legendary singers of the past. Still, there is a basic flaw in The Rose's design that makes the film hard to take seriously. While Streisand and Ross were reasonably plausible stand-ins for Fanny Brice and Billie Holiday, Midler is not credible as a bluesy rock belter. Her strident Broadway voice and campy mannerisms have more in common with Sophie Tucker, Judy Garland or even Brice than they do with a heroine who dresses, talks and self-destructs in the style of Joplin...
...happens, The Rose is so unfaithful to its ostensible subject that the miscasting is eventually forgotten. For all the film's rock-concert ambience, its overeager references to Viet Nam and drugs, it has almost nothing to do with the '60s or the counterculture. The movie's true setting is the timeless never-never land of Hollywood kitsch; The Rose is a definitive catalogue of A Star Is Born clichés. The heroine battles with booze and men and show-biz tycoons, but somehow always manages to get out onstage and give a hell...
Christine Zane is one of about 100 women at this "21" of gyms who religiously train to build rock-hard muscles and a tight, well-toned look. Women across the country who have been drawn to the rigorous sport claim that they feel stronger and more confident. Stacey Bentley, 23, a body-building champion who moved from Philadelphia to train at Gold's, says she has become a better athlete. "I hadn't skied for a while," said the 5 ft. 2 in. competitor, "but when I did last winter, it felt like I had shock absorbers...
DIVORCED. Pyrotechnic Rock Star Mick Jagger, 35, leader of the Rolling Stones; and Bianca Jagger, 34, Nicaragua-born actress and disco habitue; after eight years of marriage, one daughter; in London. After 18 months of transatlantic legal fireworks and a failed attempt to move the case to Los Angeles, jet-setting Bianca was granted a divorce in 18 minutes on uncontested grounds of adultery...