Bette Midler Read Online Free PDF

high, and I was with people who were brilliant, and they were flashing things across my brain. I was getting freaked out on everything that was going on” ( 3 ).
    When tragedies strike, weak people often crumble, while strong people look inside themselves for courage and emerge with an even stronger will to survive. It was during Bette’s third year in
Fiddler onthe Roof
that the Midler family suffered a horrible loss, and it was Bette who had to remain a tower of strength.
    Bette’s eldest sister, Judy, like Bette before her, had left Honolulu to pursue her career aspirations. Judy moved to San Francisco, where, according to Bette, “She was studying to become a moviemaker” ( 14 ). That year Judy came to New York City to see Bette—her younger sister, the Broadway star. In a bizarre twist-of-fate accident, Judy was in the heart of the theater district when she was hit by a speeding car and killed.
    It was Bette who had to telephone Hawaii to notify her family. Her sister Susan remembers answering the call. “I gave the phone to my father,” she recalls. “Bette spoke to him first, and then it was passed around to all of us. It was a nightmare. I don’t think my mother ever got over it” ( 13 ).
    “It was very bad losing Judy,” Fred Midler recalled. “As I understand it, an auto came out of one of these indoor garages and smashed her right up against the wall. Mutilated her completely. The funeral directors wouldn’t even permit us to view the body” ( 13 ).
    Judy’s death had a profound effect on Bette’s life. She realized how short life can be, and she felt that hers was passing by, and she was not moving quickly enough. She realized that it was time to get out of the Broadway show she felt stuck in and to move on to new experiences.
    She explains, “See, by that time,
Fiddler
wasn’t where it was at; it was the Beatles and marijuana, and
Hair
and Janis Joplin. All of a sudden people my age were happening, and I just wanted to see where, and IF, I could fit in” ( 13 ).
    When her sister Judy was killed, Bette took off only a week and a half and then returned to the show to ponder her future. During her time away from
Fiddler
, the role of Tzeitel was played by her understudy, Marta Heflin.
    Heflin recalled lending her support to Bette when Judy died. “It was a terrible, terrible thing. I was there at her house for sitting
shiva
. I was very impressed with her then. Because it was a terrible tragedy. But she is very strong. You could tell that she was very upset, but she was very strong. She’s a very strong lady, you know. You saw those guts coming through. I’ll never forget that. There was no self-pity, no breast beating. I did the role for a week and a half, and then she was back” ( 5 ). It was Marta who threw a much-needed life preserver to a creatively drowning Bette.
    In Greenwich Village there were several small “showcase” nightclubs where an aspiring singer could arrive on specified nights with sheet music in hand and perform. Marta was already going down to a club called Hilly’s and trying out her own material in front of the audiences on “open mike” nights. Marta invited Bette to go down to Hilly’s on one such night, to try her hand at cabaret singing.
    “She wasn’t making [any] money at it,” Bette recalls of Marta’s ventures to Hilly’s, “but she was having a good time. So, the next time she went down there, I went along” ( 19 ).
    Bette will never forget her first night of performing at Hilly’s. Up until this point, she had never considered becoming a singer—apart from the musical theater stage. “I always sang, but never seriously,” she remembers. “I got up in front of this little audience and just sang. The first two songs weren’t anything special, but the third—something just happened to me—something happened to my head and my body and it was just the most wonderful sensation I’d ever been through. It was not like me singing. It was like