Not many superstars get their show-biz starts entertaining in gay bathhouses, but Bette Midler is not your average superstar. Short, busty, and totally uninhibited on stage, her brassy demeanor, passion for old songs and older jokes, and selfmocking devotion to the muse of comedy make her a refreshing change in an era when most divas take themselves so-o-o seriously. Her legendary concerts are preserved in several cable specials and albums, as well as the 1980 feature Divine Madness! (She earned two Emmys, one for a performance on "The Tonight Show," the program that introduced her to a national audience, and another for a 1978 variety special. She was also awarded a special Tony Award in 1974.) After some extra work (in films like Hawaii largely filmed in her home state) and a role in a 1970s cheapie retitledThe Di vine Mr. J she hit the big time with her first major role, playing a thinly disguised Janis Joplin in The Rose (1979), and earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance. She then crashed in the aptly titled Jinxed! (1982); her feuds with costar Ken Wahl and director Don Siegel garnered more ink than the film itself.

Midler would seem to have been finished in movies, though she did film a very funny music video, "Beast of Burden," with Mick Jagger (in which they each got a pie in the face). Then in 1986 Paul Mazursky cast her as an uptight Beverly Hills matron in Down and Out in Beverly Hills and she scored a hit. The Disney studio then kept her busy in such popular comedies as Ruthless People (also 1986), Outrageous Fortune (1987), and Big Business (1988); that same year, she provided a voice for the animated Oliver & Company and starred in the soapy Beaches which she produced, and which earned her a Grammy for the song "Wind Beneath My Wings." She wasn't as lucky with Stella a treacly 1990 remake ofStella Dallas Her teaming with Woody Allen in Scenes From a Mall (1991) was more inspired than the film itself. She produced and starred in the ambitious, lavish musical drama For the Boys (also 1991), which failed at the box office but did give Midler some residual satisfaction when her performance was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1993 she starred as a witch in the uninspired comedy Hocus Pocus and then took the plum role of Mama Rose in a TV production of the Broadway musical "Gypsy."