December 01

Bette Davis Midler's Birthday

 

Bette used her film extra salary to move to New York in 1965 for acting parts on Broadway. She landed some minor roles right way in two off-off-Broadway shows and then won the role of Tzeitel which she played from 1966 to 1969 in the first Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof. But her unlikely big break came in the 70s as a cabaret star at the New York's Continental Baths, a gay bath house, where she met and performed with Barry Manilow, and where she created her first alternate persona,  Bathhouse Betty, which became the title of her third album.

In his February 20, 1972 column in the New York Sunday News, Rex Reed reviewed one of Bette's many farewell appearances at the Continental Baths. The often smarmy Reed commented, "In a city where nightclubs are shutting down faster than a row of standing dominos can tumble, there are 3000 people waiting to get into the Continental Baths to see the freaky Miss M."  Hurt by the comment,  Bette created her second alternate persona, The Divine Miss M, which became the title of her first album. The album, produced by Barry Manilow, won her the Grammy as Best New Artist of 1974. Bette has continued to be a major recording star, winning three more Grammy Awards,  Bette also became a major film star and has been nominated for two Academy Awards as Best Actress, the first for a drug-addicted rock star, modeled after Janis Joplin, in The Rose,. and the second for For the Boys which she said was her favorite role.

Bette's sexually raucous  concerts are always a sell-out featuring her other two raunchy personas -the mermaid-tailed  lounge-singer Delores Delago from Chicago who moves around the stage in a motorized wheelchair, and the resurrected immortal Sophie Tucker who tells filthy jokes in an old woman's voice to her boyfriend Ernie . In 1974, she received a Special Tony Award for her contribution to Broadway for her Clams on the Half Shell Revue at the Palace Theater. She continues to be a major concert star and more recently a headliner at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas - a somewhat bawdy antidote to the somewhat prissy Celine Dion's previous reign.

A childhood history of her Divine persona appeared in 1983 when her book, The Saga of Baby Divine,  became a surprise best-seller.  In an interview with Richard Laermer that appeared in the December 1983 Saturday Review, Bette commented on her childhood and how The Saga of Baby Divine was a metaphor for that childhood. According to Bette, "I didn't belong as a kid, and that always bothered me. If only I'd known that my differentness would be an asset, than my early life would have been easier."

Bette explained that the concept of Baby Divine originated during "a terrible nervous breakdown" that she suffered after the filming of Jinxed. Baby Divine was Bette's escape to an alternate universe in which she survived by giving her alternate persona a history, an essential element in many schizoid delusions created to escape the pain of reality. There are, however, less painful ways of achieving divinity than the creation of  an alternate persona, such as believing that "You are what you eat."

Divinity

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
2 egg whites, beaten stiff
1 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup water

 

dash of salt
3/4 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
butter for pan
 

1. Combine sugar, water syrup, salt, and cream of tartar in a saucepan.
2. Cover and  place over high heat and boil without stirring for about 6 minutes, or until mixture reaches the firm-ball stage (245º F on a candy thermometer). Remove from heat.
3. Pour slowly, beating constantly, over beaten egg whites. Continue beating until mixture holds its shape when dropped from a spoon. Beat in vanilla and nuts. Pour into buttered 8"x8" pan.
4. Cool and cut into squares.