Bette Midler to Return To Broadway in New John Logan Play?

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 11:00am

PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE LET THIS HAPPEN

[dreaming]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 11:46am

I hope so!!! I would go to that.

[Claudia Draper]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 11:48am

Of Course, BARBRA will star in the movie verison. Playing not only Sue Mengers but, Barbra Streisand too. Netting a Best Actress Oscar Nomination and A supporting Actress Nomination.. #NOTHINGSIMPOSSIBLE

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 12:06pm

Bette - one more musical. Please. Failing that, at least an album of early stuff you never returned to. Michael Shurtleff said in his book you were the best audition for Mary Magdalene in Superstar that he'd ever seen back in '71. I want to hear it before I die! (And if you could do another Jim Steinman song, that'd be great too.)


Bette Midler - Heaven Can Wait (Demo)

Updated On: 10/26/12 at 12:06 PM

[Gothampc]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 12:14pm

This could be good or it could be a disaster. Bette Midler playing a person that nobody knows and she won't be singing?

g.d.e.l.g.i., I didn't know she was considered for Superstar. Why didn't she get the role?

[nasty_khakis]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 12:22pm

We can go back and forth on if she's ideal for the parts or not, but her playing a "great lady" role like Dolly, Mame, Rose (again), etc in a lush revival would sell. If she's sincerely worried about a show selling (I guess Priscilla scared her?) then get a great director who can walk the line between traditional and new and budget the show (and your, ahem, salary/points) around it! Don't have a $26 million show and pay yourself $100,000 plus 20% gross and expect to break even in a year by selling all premium seats at all shows.

This all being said, I'll see her in ANYTHING.

[broadwayjim42]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 12:31pm

I'll take this in a heartbeat.

And Mengers was quite prominent in the 70's and 80's. Us old farts remember who she was.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 2:02pm

g.d.e.l.g.i., I didn't know she was considered for Superstar. Why didn't she get the role?

On this, I quote Michael Shurtleff's terrific book on auditions:

"The girl who gave the most exciting auditions (she did three of them) for the role of Mary Magdalene in Superstar was Bette Midler, already a celebrity at this time. Bette had taken my class on how to audition when she was in Fiddler on the Roof, playing a small role. She was extraordinary even then, and memorable, but she was disheartened at that time by her long tenure hidden among the supporting players of Fiddler. She felt she deserved leads. She was right. Bette Midler sang "I Don't Know How to Love Him" like no one else: disillusioned, hurt, vulnerable, with the pain of a Mary Magdalene who had been made to believe again after she was determined not to because of the hurts she had experienced. Tom O'Horgan adored her and was strongly tempted (even though Stigwood and the writers were always in favor of the woman who had done the record, Yvonne Elliman), but eventually, I think, he realized this mature, voluptuous, womanly interpretation of the role would not fit in with his cast of hippies and flower children. He couldn't quite let her go, though. I was asked to bring her into the theater to wait for Mr. Stigwood to arrive. "Miss Midler," I said, "if you would be so kind..." And without acknowledging our previous association with each other, I led her to her seat. En route she whispered to me, "Don't give me away," and I didn't, for I realized a superlative performance of a celebrity star was being given to surround the audition itself. She was regal and mysterious, this Mary Magdalene, and she revealed not an ounce of the marvelous honky-tonk performer she was to be in her one-woman shows. [...] Midler did brilliant auditions for Superstar, but she was not cast because it would have disrupted the casting of the rest of the show."

In reference to the last sentence, Shurtleff wrote more about the overall makeup of the cast, how O'Horgan generally had a great eye for talent but if he thought anyone was "plastic" (short hair, bathing regularly, not drug-oriented, boy-next-door respectable; never mind an unconventional interior, O'Horgan was concerned with visual work), that was the end of 'em. His casting of various alumni from the 101 companies of Hair that had been done all over the country -- and the world -- was the overall result.

Quoting Shurtleff again: "I tell this tale to show that actors must not worry about why they don't get a role; they should only concern themselves with doing the best damn audition they know how to do. [...] Many times I have heard directors say about an actor: 'That is the best audition we'll ever see of that role. Too bad we can't cast him.' Their regret is genuine. But there has to be a balance in casting -- the parts must fit like a jigsaw puzzle -- and there are times when the best auditioners don't 'fit.' An actor cannot concern himself with that; there lies madness. Just go ahead and audition well, cry a little when you don't get the role you want, but never ask why. The why is usually a series of imponderables over which the actor has no control."

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 2:06pm

Minor thread-jack: tell ya who did get the gig, though, Barry Manilow was the rehearsal pianist. His mother, Mathilde Pincus, who did music preparation for many shows, was on JCS in '71, and she got her darling boy a job.

[egghumor]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 2:57pm

I'm fairly certain Barry Manilow's mother is a woman named Edna Manilow.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 3:03pm

Ha!

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 3:17pm

She is in some way related to him, though. Aunt maybe? My mind immediately went to mother because she's the older female. Barry's birth name, of course, was Barry Alan Pincus.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 3:20pm

Her obituary makes no mention of him

[egghumor]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 3:21pm

Yes, she could have been his aunt, however her 1988 obit states that she had no survivors.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 3:31pm

Harold's Barry's father, right? I think she was his sister.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 8:30pm

Dyan Canon does a wicked satire of Mengers in Sondheim and Perkins: THE LAST OF SHELIA.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 10/26/12 at 9:58pm

Neil Sedaka was Barry Manilow's godmother at his christening.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 10/27/12 at 12:15am

I thought she was a Jewess.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 10/27/12 at 9:47am

Will this be Bette's "Bobbi Boland"?

Will this be Bette's "Sally Marr"?

Will this be Bette's "Blonde in the Thunderbird"?

[Wilmingtom]

Posted: 10/28/12 at 11:38am

The lesbian agent played by Shelley Winters in Blake Edwards' S.O.B. was based on Mengers. She was legendary back in the day.

[LALALand]

Posted: 10/29/12 at 2:23pm

Wasn't there a rumor Ms Midler would star in a musical version of "whatever happened to baby jane" about 10 years ago? Now that would really pack em in...

[Gothampc]

Posted: 10/29/12 at 3:58pm

^^Barbara Hershey got an attitude and wouldn't play Blanche.

[Wilmingtom]

Posted: 10/29/12 at 4:04pm

The Redgrave sisters ended up doing the musical of Baby Jane in Houston.