Bette Midler built her following singing in a New York bathhouse
Bette Midler's big break came in the basement of Manhattan's Ansonia Hotel, where in 1970 she sang to the patrons of a gay bathhouse with a young pianist named Barry Manilow. The devoted audience she won there launched a career that brought Grammys, Tonys, Emmys and Golden Globes.
She grew up in Honolulu, one of the few Jewish families in a largely Asian neighbourhood. Her father painted at a Navy base and her mother sewed; they named her after Bette Davis, although Davis said her name as two syllables and Midler uses one. Classmates voted her most talkative and later most dramatic. She left the University of Hawaii after three semesters and earned her fare to New York in 1965 playing an uncredited seasick passenger in the film Hawaii.
In New York she studied with Uta Hagen, appeared in off-off-Broadway shows, and joined Fiddler on the Roof in 1966, eventually playing the eldest daughter, Tzeitel, for three years. Then came the Continental Baths. Manilow went on to co-produce her first album, The Divine Miss M, in 1972; it went platinum and won her the Grammy for Best New Artist. Her cover of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy honoured her idols the Andrews Sisters, and when Patty and Maxene came backstage, Midler's first question was what else they had recorded. She later embraced the nickname Bathhouse Betty, saying she felt she had helped the gay liberation movement.
Film followed. In The Rose, from 1979, she played a self-destructive rock star inspired by Janis Joplin, winning a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, and the title song won her a second Grammy. After the flop Jinxed! she spent four years away from movies, then signed with Disney in 1985 and became a comedy star in Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Ruthless People and Big Business. The Beaches soundtrack, with Wind Beneath My Wings, sold four million copies in the US and brought a Record of the Year Grammy.
Much later came her first lead in a Broadway musical, the 2017 revival of Hello, Dolly!, which won her a Tony. She has sold more than 30 million records across 14 studio albums.
Source: Bette Midler
